The Religion of Ancient Rome

Laura

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Because of issues on another thread, I decided to share here some text I wrote a couple of years ago. The footnotes will not be included.
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THE ANCIENT RELIGION AND THE ANCIENT CITY

In 1864, a brilliant French historian named Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, published a remarkable work entitled “THE ANCIENT CITY”. Wikipedia tells us:

…he showed forcibly the part played by religion in the political and social evolution of Greece and Rome. The book was so consistent throughout, so full of ingenious ideas, and written in so striking a style, that it ranks as one of the masterpieces of the French language in the 19th century. By this literary merit Fustel set little store, but he clung tenaciously to his theories. When he revised the book in 1875, his modifications were very slight, and it is conceivable that, had he recast it, as he often expressed the desire to do in the last years of his life, he would not have abandoned any part of his fundamental thesis. The work is now largely superseded.

Notice the “he clung tenaciously to his theories” and the last sentence: “this work is now largely superseded.” I have searched the literature and have found no justification for the tone of this online nonsense. Indeed, there was a furor of criticism aimed at Fustel, but it was primarily ad hominem and the only serious critique I could find was some other expert quibbling over the tense of a Latin verb. Perhaps we can get a glimpse of the reason for the attacks against him in another sentence from the above cited article:

His minute knowledge of the language of the Greek and Roman institutions, coupled with his low estimate of the conclusions of contemporary scholars, led him to go directly to the original texts, which he read without political or religious bias.

However, immediately after making this fair estimate, the article takes away with the other hand by saying:

When, however, he had succeeded in extracting from the sources a general idea that seemed to him clear and simple, he attached himself to it as if to the truth itself.

Having made such bold criticisms, one might wish to know the authority of the encyclopedist not to mention his proofs. Alas! There is no identity and no proofs. Well, the present moment is not the one for arguing the case for the enduring substance of The Ancient City; I merely suggest that the reader avail themselves of this marvelous book which is eminently readable and judge for him or herself. I will suggest that one of the reasons Fustel’s work was buried was that he denied that there had ever been a “conquest by barbarians”. He’s right, there wasn’t. He opened a huge gap in the standard historical explanations that he was unfortunately, unable to bridge due to the fact that he spent almost the rest of his life defending himself from relentless attacks of the authoritarian follower academics.

Here I should mention that there are a whole lot of theories about history. For example, Jared Diamond (geography and physiology) wrote “GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL: THE FATES OF HUMAN SOCIETIES” in 1997 to present his ideas that differences in power and technology between human societies originate in environmental differences, which are amplified by various positive feedback loops. Then, there is the earlier Annales school founded by French historians Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre in 1929 which rejects an emphasis on politics and war as being the prime movers of history. Instead, geography, material culture, and what later Annalistes called mentalités, are the important matters. There is Marxism which postulates that economics is the key to history. A subset of Marxism is Functionalism vs. Intentionalism which deals mainly with the history of Nazi Germany. The Great Man theory (I like to call it the “Big Chief Theory”) proposes that history can be explained by the impact of influential or charismatic individuals. The opposite to that is the claim that great men are the products of their societies and the societies themselves – the masses and the slow or fast evolution of social constructs – drive the great men. One of the nuttier ones is American exceptionalism. This proposes that the United States is "qualitatively different" from other nations. For the authoritarian follower believers in this one, the United States is the biblical shining "City upon a Hill", the new “chosen people”, and exempt from historical forces that have affected other countries. They miss the point that Rome was the original holy “city on a hill”, the original “chosen people” long before the Jews made up their own history, and this “theory” is exactly what the Romans thought about themselves; look what happened to them. So much for being exempt from historical forces.

According to most of these theories, particularly Marxist and related ideas, religion, morals and culture, are created and used to justify the distribution of economic power. Fustel de Coulanges however, had declared that religious beliefs were the fundamental reality in ancient Greece and Rome, and he pretty well demonstrated that all the other aspects of the Graeco-Roman civilization followed from its religion including its perception of economics. Using the information conveyed by the ancient writers about rituals, customs, folk beliefs, ancient laws and language, Fustel de Coulanges was able to infer the most likely ancient beliefs of the Romans (and Greeks). Despite the highly speculative nature of his results, he apparently captured many of the essentials about early Greek and Roman beliefs as recent archaeology has demonstrated.

According to Fustel, the belief of the ancient Indo-Europeans that was foundational to the religions of both Greece and Rome, was essentially a cult of the dead – ancestor worship – and this, itself, was based on a fear of the dead: what they could and would do to the living if they were not kept happy under the earth and taken care of by descendants. There was an element of benevolence, as well: if the dead were happy, they would act as guardians of the family. But the more general tone of the matter was that it was absolutely essential for a family to continue to provide worship and material sustenance for its ancestors to keep them in their graves. The spirits of the dead fathers werere associated with their bodies which are buried on the family’s property, which then became a holy place to that family alone, and this gave rise to the concept of private property. Each family was an exclusive cult of its ancestors, who often were associated with gods and heroes, and had its own specific rituals, and its own high priest, the father - paterfamilias. To participate in the worship of an ancestor-god was a privilege allowed only to family members which strengthened the idea of the clan and private property and boundaries, because if a person were to trespass on the holy place where someone else’s ancestors were buried, dire things might happen. There are curious elements about this boundary business that I discussed in Comets and the Horns of Moses, so we don’t need to be diverted by it here.

The role of family high priest was passed from father to eldest son along with ownership of the property and its tombs which was the sacred enclosure where the dead had to be confined and kept happy. It could be said that the eldest son was given to the ancestors at birth to maintain the worship and pass it on for the safety of the entire family. It was a huge responsibility and you have to understand how seriously these people took this conceptualization. Just as little Catholic children begin training in Catechism at a very young age, so did the first-born son of the Roman family begin his training to become the priest of the family worship. It was enforced and reinforced, that this was very, very important and everything else the family did, all its successes and prosperity, and all other laws stemmed from this urgent necessity of appeasing of the dead and associated gods and heroes. Because of this personal responsibility to keep your dead ancestors under control, it was understood that no external power had the right to regulate or change a family’s private cult without risk of angering their dead and bringing on some dire result. There was no other priest but the father and there was no hierarchy. In later Roman Republic times, the Pontifex might ascertain if a father was performing his religious duties for the safety of others, but had no right to modify them in any way.

Extended families, members of which shared a worship of the same ancestors, could become very large and powerful. This was called a “gens”. If a family died out in the male line, there was no more high priest to conduct the worship of the ancestors and they might get loose and wreck havoc on society, so rules of inheritance were formulated so that a male relative could succeed to the priesthood if necessary and thus, laws of Agnatic primogeniture and inheritance came to be the foundation of civil inheritance laws.

Closely intertwined with the ancestor worship was the worship of fire; so closely, in fact, that it is probably not possible to separate them or to determine if one came before the other. The ancients so closely associated the fire worship with the worship of the ancestors, that they were actually one religion. The fire was linked to the ancestral spirits, the lares and Penates (household gods) and it seems that these were something like the souls of the dead to whom the Romans attributed a supernatural power. In a passage in the AENEID, Hector tells Iowans that he is going to entrust to him the Trojan Penates, and it is the coals of the hearth-fire that he commits to his care. Aeneas, speaking of the sacred fire he transports across the waters, designates it by the name of the Lar of Assaracus, or the soul of his ancestor.

The fire itself was divine and was a benevolent being that maintained the life and health of the family. The fire was a moral being, chaste and shining; it could think, had a conscience, knew men’s hearts and duties, had sentiments and affections, it enjoyed what was good and beautiful, and nourished the soul of man. They made offerings to the fire of whatever they thought the fire might like: flowers, fruits, incense, wine and, of course victims. One of the Orphic hymns is a prayer to the fire:

Render us always prosperous, always happy O fire; thou who are eternal, beautiful, ever young; thou who nourishes, thou who are rich, receive favorably these our offerings, and in return give us happiness and sweet health.

This fire in the home represented the eternal life of the family (not the individual) and the rule was that there should always be a few live coals on the hearth. Obviously, the fire that warmed the home and cooked the food was something more than a material phenomenon. The evidence for this was the fact that the fire may only be ignited with the aid of certain rituals and using certain implements and must be fed with certain kinds of wood. Preparing of meals with the holy fire was a religious act. The god lived in the fire; the god cooked the bread, the meat, warmed the home. Before the family ate, they gave a portion of their meal to the fire. Before drinking, they poured out a bit of wine for the fire. Every meal was sacred communion with the fire, the god. This fire, as a tutelary god, was pure and it was forbidden to throw anything unclean into it or to commit any unacceptable act in its presence. In the worship of all other gods, which was carried out with the aid of the fire, the first and last invocation was always addressed to the fire itself. As Fustel pointed out, we read the same thing in the RG VEDA: “Agni must be invoked before all the other gods. We pronounce his venerable name before that over all the other immortals. O Agni, whatever other god we honor with our sacrifices, the sacrifice is always offered to thee.”

It seems that, in the most ancient of times, the dead were buried under the floor of the house. Putting grandpa under the hearth may have been seen as a way to keep him close and involved with the family. After a time, the dead were buried in tombs or cremated and their ashes put in tombs, so without going too much further into detail, let’s just leave it at the fact that the dead and fire were rooted so deeply in the minds of these people that even great myths and fantastical stories of gods and heroes could not replace the dedication of the Romans to their fire and ancestors.

From groups of such families that acknowledged one another as holding these basic beliefs, and with whom intermarriage was approved, the earliest cities were formed. The city was a union of families, not of individuals. The city itself was a religious body – there was no other form of organization – with agreed-upon gods, an agreed-upon cult exclusive to citizens who could only be members of the accepted families, and its own high priest (the king).

The second half of THE ANCIENT CITY describes how, as time passed, the customs that had emerged from the ancient religion became harder to justify. This was mainly due to the fact that the oligarchy of the city of Rome and the institutions they had created, excluded a large segment of the population. These were the plebs, the people without recognized ancestral gods who did not belong to families participating in the civic cult. Fustel doesn’t really explain why it should be that some families had gods as ancestors, and some did not. It would seem that anybody who knew who his father or grandfather was and was capable of making a fire, could have his own ancestors and religion. But that wasn’t the case and one suspects something more to this situation and we may discover a clue in the fact that there is actually more to this Roman religion business than Fustel de Coulanges imagined.

PORTENTS AND PRODIGIES

Suzanne Rasmussen writes in “PUBLIC PORTENTS IN REPUBLICAN ROME”:

In my view, public portents have not received adequate attention from modern scholarship on the Ancient World. Accounts of portents are often inserted as quaint little items that can enliven dry, historical subject matter, serving as entertaining examples of concepts such as irrationality or political manipulation, deception, and humbug. Many a discussion has dwelled upon the question of how on earth the Romans could put their faith in portents based on entrails, blood raining from the sky, sweating statues of deities, seasick hens that refused to eat, and so on and so forth. As this study will demonstrate, in certain areas the research in this field seems to bear a disquieting resemblance to St. Augustine’s presentation of the pagan (mal)practices of divination. …

I am primarily concerned with examining social, religious, and political behavior, as well as the significance and functions of public portents as an institution in a variety of social and religio-political contexts. … this study’s repetitive use of the term religion-political is meant to underscore the indissoluble connection existing in the Roman res publica between the two categories of religion and politics...

In essence, what seems to be the case is that, in addition to keeping the fire happy and preventing the dead from coming back to haunt them, the Romans were very, very concerned with a whole host of things that they considered to be direct messages from the gods or things that would terribly offend the gods and cause one of those unpleasant “direct messages.” So, to protect themselves, it seems that they created the Holy City of Rome as a place where the accepted families could gather to appease mainly the gods of the sky. Their dedication to doing this, their concern that nothing that anybody in their society did should offend the gods, came to be the ruling dynamic in the life of the city-state in all respects in its earliest period and lasting for a very long time.

Well, certainly, while writing in COMETS AND THE HORNS OF MOSES about ancient Greece and its emergence from a Dark Age following obvious cataclysmic events, I was wondering how those same events acted on the Romans. What seems to be the bottom line is that the Roman family religion and the City Religion that dealt specifically with Public Portents, were both forged in catastrophes that must have made indelible impressions on the psyches of the Romans. One of the curious things about Roman religion was its almost total lack of mythological material from either the early Latins or Etruscans. The closest thing they have to such religious underpinnings are the stories of their early kings. They were not concerned with any stories of individual deities and the surviving material leaves a puzzle as to what were the actual motivations and explanations of why they did what they did and believed they had to do what they had to do. Because, in the end, the portents were all about methodological diligence in following the prescribed procedures for getting the information “from the gods”, so to say, and then, taking religious actions as advised by the authorized experts so as to perform the correct ritual to expiate the fault.

Here we can note that the Greeks were far more imaginative than the Romans in respect of creating myths about comet gods and then transforming those gods into their ancestors and finally, separating the mythical events from celestial events entirely . The Romans were more pragmatic and conservative and thus, their worship in the ancient style lasted far longer than it did in Greece, though the beginnings were substantially the same. It could be said that these differences may have reflected an early tribal separation due to personality differences between rival chieftains who then impressed their own personalities on their family/tribe by virtue of genetics and conditioning. This may, in fact, have been at the root of the founding story of Romulus and Remus.

Unfortunately, most histories of Rome or academic discussions about same, completely exclude this aspect of the Roman state. Their narrow-minded exclusion is based on thinking that the reports of prodigies were some sort of collective hysteria and that portents were solely a means of political manipulation. They sometimes interpret portents and prodigies as possibly even literary embellishment by later writers who were adding flavor to their accounts. However, one may notice that Livy includes these records into his work in a stiff and formulaic style which contrasts with his usual elegant prose, thus suggesting that the events must be copied directly from the Annales Maximi, published in the 120s BC by P. Mucius Scaevola, who compiled his list from the tabulae pontificum, the annual records of the pontifex maximus of Rome.

In any event, most – if not all – historians discard these important elements of early Roman history as irrelevant to the religious and political institutions of Rome. But the facts seem to be quite the opposite: they were a significant element in the perception and construction of reality of the Roman people. Portents and prodigies played a far more important role in terms of history and politics, religion and sociology, than is acknowledged by the gentlemen historians, and a careful study reveals that they were not the by-product of mass hysteria or aberrant psychological conditions of a few crazies nor were they the product of the superstitious Roman mind ignorant of natural laws.

Georges Dumezil seeks to explain prodigies as mass psychosis around the time of the Second Punic War:

It was in fact a true psychosis, with outbursts of terror and paroxysms of panic, which possessed the Roman mob during these terrible years. While magistrates and priests calmly administered sacred affairs, this psychosis was generating secret mysteries in a kind of anarchy; the proliferation of prodigies announced in good faith was an almost yearly symptom of this disease…

Indeed, Livy notes connections between times of war and the increased reporting of prodigies but if one reviews the annual reporting of portents throughout the history of the Republic, one discovers that the “psychosis” from which Rome was suffering lasted over 800 years down to the end of the reign of Domitian. What such scholars miss entirely is the fact that the entire Roman governing system was set up as the social and religio-political means of maintaining equilibrium between Rome and the gods who were, obviously, upset rather often. Further, there are numerous “heavenly prodigies” that are not linked to martial activity and wars that are not linked to prodigies.

Those historians who think that the extraordinary phenomena reported by the Romans were just a means of political mass manipulation also miss the point. Overall, it seems that it wasn’t just the masses who believed – the magistrates and senate were as preoccupied with the indications of wrath as everyone else. Portents weren’t used to control the masses although, in the later Republic it is obvious that they were used for political purposes in the conflicts within the ruling aristocracy itself, (and Cicero had his hand in that, too, as we will see). This process was described by Toynbee:

The observation of a meteorological portent, or even the formal announcement, by a public officer, that he was scanning the sky on the chance that a meteorological portent might catch his eye, was enough to place an embargo on all political activities. This shameless misuse of the official Roman religion for political purposes raises, once again, a question that has been touched upon [earlier]. During the last two centuries of the republican period of Roman history, did the Hellenically-educated members of the Roman “Establishment” disbelieve completely in the truth and efficacy of their ancestral religion? In continuing to make an outward show of respect for it, where they utterly insincere? In manipulating it for political purposes, did they have their tongues in their cheeks?

Toynbee was influenced by the Greek Polybius’s view that the purpose of Roman religion was to control the passions and violent anger of the masses. His idea was naturally conditioned by his own culture; to Polybius, the linking of res publica to public divination was preposterous. Nevertheless, it is true that there was a growing Hellenization in Rome and thus, there appears to be some validity in this idea at least toward the end of the republic and among a few of its politicians, though not all by a long shot!

In any event, it’s very gratifying to find that someone else has been searching through the sources for the same types of events that I have been assembling for years now though for quite different reasons. Rasmussen’s book is a sociological study and not an inquiry into what might have been going on in the planetary and cosmic environment. As Rasmussen notes (as I did some time ago as well) with my extensive tabular arrangement of the data (she uses tables too), the ancient sources for portents and prodigies exhibit a striking agreement in respect of such things and these reports do not appear to be embellished in any way. Further, there is agreement among the sources as to the firmly established procedures for responding to the intruding events. Rasmussen details the sources, discusses who relied on whom, and the usual chain of evidence type analyses; she then notes:

There are traces of a partial pattern which has been emphasized repeatedly by scholars, namely the occurrence of large numbers of prodigies in times of crisis. Of course this pattern could reflect an actual increase in the number of reports.

What is important is to know that there was an ancient system guiding the Romans in their activities via augurs, haruspices, and portents. Very early, probably during an extended period of environmental stress and celestial activity, there was an agreement between some Latins and the Etruscans and many elements of Etruscan practices became “Roman” so it is difficult to distinguish sometimes which were which. In general, however, extispicy – reading the entrails of sacrificed victims – was an Etruscan science performed by their haruspices.

Auspices, on the other hand, was linked to Jupiter was a Roman form of divination as opposed to Etruscan extispicy. Roman public augury recognized only a limited range of bird omens in contrast to non-Roman augury which utilized any species. The system of interpretation was apparently well-established. Apparently, no public actions were taken without first taking the auspices.

All the ancient literature about Rome confirms how crucial their augural science was to all political activity. Public actions such as passing laws and conducting assemblies, elections, Senate meetings, etc, could only take place after auspices had been taken. It was a traditional part of the religio-political process. Thunder and lightning and bird omens revealed the approval or disapproval of the gods and without the approval of the gods, nothing could be undertaken. The objective of public augury – as a traditional institution – was to determine if the gods were favorable to state business and public ceremonies including the inauguration of places, people and things. A decision of the senate could not be legally valid without the blessing of the augurs and it had to be done in the correct location as designated by the augur as well.

The pomerium was Rome’s sacred augural boundary within which auspices on behalf of the city could be taken. Certain political assemblies could only take place within the pomerium, and others – including all military events – had to be kept outside the pomerium.

A number of ancient writers some of whose other works have survived, were augurs and wrote works on augury including Lucius Julius Caesar, Appius Claudius Pulcher and Cicero himself.

In respect of Cicero and his war against change, a particular type of prodigy comes to the fore as significant: incestum of the Vestal Virgins; that is, breaking of the vows of chastity by any of the virgins put in charge of tending the sacred fire of the temple of Vesta. Such a “prodigy” consists in a violation of sacred law by human beings: incorrect behavior that could anger the gods towards the entire populace. This would constitute a tangible violation threatening the welfare of Roman society and the security of the state militarily and politically.

There were a number of such episodes of incestum on the part of the Vestal virgins, though not so many as might be expected over the very long life of the institution. One of the earlier events was in 216 BC when the Vestal Virgins Opimia and Florionia were accused. Livy then notes that a very un-Roman expiation was undertaken, to wit, a Gallic man and woman, and a Greek man and woman, were buried alive at the Forum Boarium . Then, one of the virgins involved committed suicide and the other was buried alive while at least one of the men involved, a scriba pontificius named L. Cantilius, was flogged to death – a very usual Roman procedure. We can also note that 216 BC was the year in which Hannibal defeated Roman forces at the Battle of Cannae. In numbers of Romans killed, this was the second greatest defeat of Rome, after the Battle of Arausio.

In short, in addition to celestial phenomena, meteorological phenomena, the birth of deformed infants, talking cows, rains of blood and milk, fertile mules, incorrect human behavior could be adjudged as prodigies by the senate, and therefore requiring public expiation. At the same time, some prodigies could be interpreted as favorable.

According to the tradition, auspicia were originally a patrician prerogative whereas plebeian magistrates, assemblies, and plebiscite were usually appointed or approved without any prior taking of auspices. The traditional patrician monopoly on auspices raises a number of questions, especially about how plebeians accessing patrician offices were handled with respect to the patrician auspices. The sources indicate considerable social, political, and religious changes in the relationship between patricians and plebeians from around 500 BC until the passing of the Licini-Sextic laws in 367 BC granting plebeians access to the consulate, and the lex Ogulnia in 300 BC which gave them access to the college of augurs and the college of pontifices.

The right to take auspicia was transferred through the election of magistrates and, according to Varro, the patrician auspices could be divided into two categories: auspicia maxima and auspicia minora. Auspicia maxima related to consuls, praetors, and censors, whereas asupicia minora related to the other types of magistrates. In other words, there were various auspices depending on magisterial rank and the right to take auspices was relinquished at the end of one’s magisterial term. If the succession of consuls was interrupted, the auspices reverted to the senate until new consuls were elected. In war, the right of auspicy was transferred to the commander by means of lex curiata.

Apparently, the different priesthoods had different specialties that were complementary and they appear to have worked together without competition. The four priesthoods relating to official Roman divination were:

1) The Roman Quindecimvirii sacris faciundis: they guarded the Sibylline Books, scriptures which they consulted and interpreted at the request of the Senate. This collegium also oversaw the worship of any foreign gods which were introduced to Rome. Originally these duties had been performed by duumviri (or duoviri), two men of patrician rank . Their number was increased to ten by a Licinio-Sextian law in 367 BCE, which also stipulated that half of these priests were to be plebeian. During the Middle Republic, members of the college were admitted through cooption. At some point in the 3rd century BC, several priesthoods, probably including the quindecimviri, began to be elected through the voting tribes.

2) The Roman pontifices, who interpreted prodigia: The pontifices duties and privileges included listing reports of prodigies and consulting the libri pontificii. These books included annual chronicles, lists of magistrates, wars, important events, rituals performed and results, commentary on all of these things, and responses and decreta on religious matters. The original number of pontifices was three but this was increased to six, nine, fifteen, and finally sixteen by Julius Caesar. The college was opened to plebeians in 300 BC. Cicero’s speech De domo sua reveals the decisive role the pontifices played in treating prodigies. The expertise of this priesthood was crucial to the Senate’s decision in the religious dispute over Cicero’s house which had been razed during his exile and consecrated to the gods. Cicero wanted the land back.

3) The Roman augures, who interpreted auspice: he augural college was parallel to the pontifices in number and expansion of those members. There were originally three members – one for each tribe – and then six, opened to plebeians and expanded to nine and then increased by Sulla to 15 and Caesar adding a 16th.

4) The Etruscan haruspices, who interpreted exta and prodigia: The haruspices were recruited from aristocratic Etruscan families and were a very prestigious group. Etruscan principes early intermarried with Patrician families and the Etruscan institution was internalized in these noble families and passed down father to son. Cicero mentions a senate decree stating that sons from the most prominent families were to study haruspicy to prevent the discipline from dying out. Their principal duty was to “read the entrails” of the victims. Another haruspex group appears to have been linked to the sacrifices performed by the magistrates. They often went along on military campaigns as well. There were also, it seems, wandering “street-corner” haruspices specializing in private “readings” whom Cicero, Cato and others considered to be charlatans. The haruspices do not seem to have been members of an actual Roman priesthood nor did they have a collegium, but they were highly respected as experts nevertheless as the sources show that the Roman authorities systematically made use of these Etruscan priests in the interpretation of public prodigies. In recounting Postumius’ speech on the Bacchanalia affair in 186 BC, Livy places the haruspical responsa on a par with pontifical responsa.

The sources emphasize interpretations and calculations on the part of haruspices, so different criteria must have determined who was called in. Cicero points out several instances in which the haruspices and Quindecimviri gave identical responses. According to Cicero, the Romans adopted haruspicy because it was handy for getting omens for individual activities. In volume one of his DE DIVINATION, Cicero discusses how the signs in the entrails can possibly occur. He presents two theories: either the selection of the sacrificial animal is subject to an omnipresent force, or changes take place in the entrails before the sacrifice is carried out. However, in his second book of DE DIVINATION, Cicero declares against such possibilities in strong terms – calling it absurd - as well as arguing against the idea that some divine force pervades the whole world. (We’ll come back to Cicero’s DE DIVINATION futher on when we find him using public portents as a propaganda tool.)

In the beginning, the priests were selected, then the Lex Domitia de sacerdotiis in 104 BC abolished this co-optive election and replaced it with elections in 17 tribes chosen by lot. This law was repealed by Sulla in 81 BC, but restored in 63 BC through the Lex Labiena. This was important to the election of Julius Caesar as Pontifex Maximus. Members of the colleges of pontifices and were elected for life. However, they could forfeit their offices if sentenced in court, though augurs appear to have been immune to this.

In Rome, the struggle for political power was not in any way a fight to “control the gods” because in Rome, augury and auspicia was not at all about “gaining control over the gods or forces of life”. On the contrary, in the Roman view of things, human beings were subject to the will of the gods and the religio-political desire was, above all, to be in harmony with the gods while one’s opponents could be accused of being in disharmony. To the Roman mind, the wish to exercise control over the gods would, itself, constitute a violation of the pax deorum. Neglecting the auspices could be fatal, as the ancient sources exampled time and time again.

In short, the function of auspices and augury was to examine and confirm that Roman society was in good relationship to the gods in respect of planned political, religious and military undertakings, offices, and individuals, were concerned. If such confirmation was not forthcoming, the reason or error had to be determined using the augural science and expiation undertaken which could reestablish the balance.

Cicero tells us that the idea of interpreting and then performing rituals to expiate prodigies and portents came from the Etruscans. A public prodigy or portent was one that was reported to the senate and approved by that body as a prodigium publicum, a portent relevant to the society as a whole and which would require the entire society to contribute to the ritual expiation. Whatever it was, it was an indicator that the pax deorum had been disturbed. There was a distinction between private and public prodigies though private prodigies that occurred in respect of public individuals could be adjudged as public portents. But the procedure that had to be followed for the declaration to be made and the expiation performed, demonstrates that it was solely the purview of the senate to approve the prodigy as public. Further, it seems clear that what was or was not determined to be a public prodigy does not indicate any sort of religious development on the part of the Romans. They were singularly rigid and conservative right up to the end of the republic at which point, Cicero, in a desperate bid to “save the republic”, fought viciously against those who would set aside the strict powers of the senate to declare prodigies and expiations.

Despite the senate’s status as the ultimate decision-making authority in public portent matters, there is no doubt that the official augurs did wield considerable power being the only religious specialists authorized to advise on the interpretation of auspices relevant to the welfare of the Roman state. According to the rules of the ideal state, Cicero tells us in De legibus, that those leading negotiations must observe the auspices and obey the public augur. Furthermore, in the event of a conflict between the magistrates and the official priesthoods’ observations and expertise in matters of public portents, the regard for religio is always identified with the regard for the welfare of the res publica. This places the response from the official priesthoods over and above the individual magistrate’s actions, opinions and schemes.

It is fairly clear that these offices were held by men from the most wealthy and powerful families meaning noble patrician families and ennobled and wealthy plebeian families: the political elite of Rome. The same group of people combined the roles of handling religious affairs as well as making political decisions in the interests of the state. As we can see from Cicero’s writings, he saw absolutely nothing wrong with this and from his perspective, an ideal social and religio-political establishment featuring the same people was not only acceptable, but highly desirable. This, of course, leads to the consideration that the formal distinction between priesthoods and magistracies was only a technical detail that meant nothing in practice. Not all priests were magistrates, nor all magistrates priests, to be sure; Cicero did not become an augur until ten years after his consulship. Further, the pontifex maximus could order a person who was simultaneously serving as priest and magistrate to pay a fine for putting his magisterial duties above his religious duties. This highlights the fact that, at some point in time, it must have been seen as needful to put measures in place to ensure that politics yielded to religion because the latter was seen as the preeminent concern of the political state. Nevertheless, it is clear that certain individuals did hold multiple offices and would have discussed religio-political affairs among themselves.

Rasmussen describes the fixed procedure for determining prodigies based on the sources. Anyone could report an observation of an unusual event to the senate. The consuls would normally present the reports along with eyewitnesses who corroborated the event. Some reports were submitted in writing. The senate then had to decide if the event was a prodigium publicum. There were three options available to them at this point:

1) Refusal to approve the event as a prodigy. This could be justified on the grounds that there were too few witnesses or the witnesses were of dubious reliability.
2) Approve the event as a prodigy, but not relevant to the public welfare. It would be declared to be a “private portent.”
3) Approve the event as important to the public welfare and then undertake to find out from specialists what form the expiation must take.

For the latter part of the process, the three groups of experts used were: the decemviri sacris faciundis, the pontifices, and the haruspices. The determination of the priests were given in the form of responsa and decreta which the senate could then choose to comply with or not. They could also decide whether or not to report the prodigy and responses to the public. At that point, the senate could authorize the recommended actions which was the formal responsibility of the consuls who frequently were the ones required to perform the expiatory sacrifices themselves. This will be important further on, so keep it in mind. For the moment, notice that Livy reports several cases where prodigies were reported and had to be expiated after new consuls had been elected and before the old consuls had left to take up governorships in their assigned provinces as was the general order of things. Apparently, prodigies could be collected up and expiated all at once, but some of them were so serious that expiation was required as quickly as possible. The timing and swiftness could ensure a good beginning for the next year. The delays imposed on consuls due to prodigies reveals quite clearly that the manner of dealing with public portents certainly exerted a powerful influence on the political establishment itself, and was not necessarily a tool for mass manipulation. The sources are very clear on the fact that prodigies were high priority items on the senatorial agenda. Issues relating to the gods were always dealt with before matters relating to human affairs. Rasmussen writes:

The Roman Senate is commonly characterized by its primarily moral power, auctoritas, its advisory function, and its lack of any real powers. Yet in connection with matters relating to public portents and religio-political disputes involving portents, the sources and the religio-political procedure demonstrate that in practice, the Senate was the decision-making body….

There can be no doubt about the mutual interaction between the prodigies on the one hand and political and military actions on the other. What is more, the possibility of achieving a religious legitimization of political matters is incorporated into the procedure itself….

Another bit of evidence of the importance of prodigies was the fact that, in 208 BC, the pontifices raised an objection to the consecration of a temple to two deities: Honos and Virtus, on the grounds that it would be impossible to know which deity to appeal to in expiation in the event the temple was struck by lightning!

It seems that, in the year 193 BC, according to Livy, the Senate made a decision to stop accepting prodigy reports because they were too numerous. Rasmussen speculates that this was not so much evidence of political manipulation but that the high incidence of earthquakes and other prodigies of the time obstructed political life entirely. The prodigies prevented the departure of the consuls, prevented the convening of the senate, the transaction of any public business, etc. The Sibylline Books were consulted and the necessary rituals performed, after which the senate said “that’s enough.” The fact that the senate had to take this extreme measure is evidence of the essential role of prodigies in the political life of Rome. Once a prodigy had been reported, the senate was obliged to deal with it according to traditional, fixed, procedure. If, as some scholars would like to think, portents held no real significance at the political level, the senate could easily have chosen to ignore or reject them. Instead, they pursued the policy of a singular expiation as advised by the priests and the Sibylline books, and were assured thereby that they could stop accepting further reports and being required thereby to deal with them.

On another occasion that Livy reports, a violent wind knocked over a pillar and statue in front of the temple of Jupiter in 152 BC. The haruspices interpreted the prodigy to mean death among the magistrates and priests upon which announcement, ever single one of them resigned!

The point of this brief survey is that environmental factors, human behaviors, and unusual phenomena had decisive, even controlling, influences on social, political, and military affairs in the Roman Republic right down to the time of, and including the actions of, Cicero, as I will show further on. Indeed, we will see that political manipulation of this tradition took place, but the tradition, the system, had to exist first – and in a significant way – for such manipulation to be implemented – as it was by Cicero.

The modern mind is shocked when considering all this Roman business of killing critters and splattering blood everywhere every time they turned around, along with all the other apparently silly rituals, one begins to think that these people were simply nuts. You ask yourself: how could anybody believe that nonsense?! And when you consider that our own civilization is considered to be modeled on that one, that great thinkers of the Renaissance attributed to such as Cicero enormous powers of intellect and rationality, how the heck do we deal with the fact that these people – including Cicero – were regularly peering at the guts of freshly dead animals in order to decide whether or not they should take a trip, make a speech, pass a law, make war, or execute prisoners?

Obviously, we cannot judge them by the standards of our own time. Perhaps they would be more justifiably appalled at our nebulous astralized belief systems that don’t seem to have anything at all to do with reality. Obviously, rationality is a culture-bound and context-related concept. As Rasmussen says:

Roman divination represents a series of assumptions and institutionalized behavioral patterns that attribute rational qualities (in the modern sense) to that which is irrational (in the modern sense). This is done by establishing causal contexts based on the systematic observation of signs/portents that are interpreted according to specific rules and patterns. … based on the sources dealing with public portents in Roman religion, it is possible to regard divination as a scientific discipline that is first and foremost characterized by its reliance on the systematic organization of actual observations. I define the term “scientific discipline” as an institutionalized body of knowledge that builds on systematic, empirical examinations of connections that seek and understanding of the world and include the establishment of profane and sacred contexts. …

Cicero’s DE DIVINATION emphasizes that as far as scientific divination is concerned, the many years of continued observation have allowed the experts to amass large amounts of knowledge concerning the connections between the occurrence of certain signs and subsequent events. Cicero declares that although mortals cannot explain why each individual thing happens, it is sufficient to establish that the things do happen. He makes the comparison that if one were to claim a magnet is a stone that attracts iron without being able to explain why, it is not the same as denying the existence of the phenomenon….

Roman public portents are concerned with the registration, systematization, interpretation, and potential expiation of present phenomena relating to future events, based on past experience.
 
THE VESTAL VIRGINS

In Rome, the embodiment of the fire was Vesta, the symbol of moral order. Ovid says of her that she occupied the first place in the religious practices of men. The Vestal Virgins were very important in the Roman religious scheme of things. They were priestesses of the goddess Vesta, the personification of the communal hearth which symbolized the collective hearths of the citizens. The tradition told that the Vestals were instituted by King Numa Pompilius, the legendary second king of Rome. There were six of them, they were appointed while young children between the ages of six and ten years old, and had to be daughters of respectable citizens, born in wedlock, in Italy, preferably Rome. In practice, since the earliest “citizens” (those who had ancestors and a family altar) turned into the oligarchy, that meant only daughters of such families were usually selected. The position was one of great honor and certain advantages. After inauguration, a Vestal virgin passed from the control (tutela) of her father to that of the pontifex maximus. She served for a minimum of 30 years which meant she might retire as early as the age of 36, but she could stay on voluntarily for life. If she chose to retire, she could marry, (but 36 was a bit old for having children).

The Vestal virgins had a pretty easy job: they just kept the fire going in the temple, made daily sacrifices, kept the temple clean, and presided over a number of religious ceremonies throughout the year. The persons of the Vestal virgins were sacred and anyone who raised a hand against them was executed. This meant that their presence was a guarantee against violence and they could appeal on behalf of an accused person; a chance encounter with a Vestal could save a condemned man from execution. Finally, they were permitted to own property and could will it to whom they chose, a quite advantageous legal privilege. Obviously, it can be seen that their position was one which invited potential corruption.

These women had a pretty decent life but there was one thing they could not ever, ever do: lose their virginity. A non-virgin polluted the sacred rites and called down the anger of the goddess and probably other gods. If they had sexual intercourse with anyone, the crime was considered to be incest, not just adultery or wantonness. The penalty was death for both the Vestal and the paramour. The Vestal would be forced into a pit with a few days food and water, and the pit closed with stones or bricks and a mound of earth. The man would be flogged to death with rods. This punishment was actually carried out on at least 11 occasions up to 113 BC. Plutarch writes:

[The Pontifex Maximus] was also the overseer of the holy virgins who are called Vestals. For they ascribe to Numa also the dedication of the Vestal Virgins and generally the care and worship of the inextinguishable fire which they guard, either because he considered the nature of fire to be pure and uncorrupted and so entrusted it to uncontaminated and undefiled bodies or else because he compared its fruitlessness and sterility to virginity. In fact, in all of Greece wherever there is an inextinguishable fire, as at Delph and Athens, virgins do not have the care of it but women who are beyond the age of marriage.

Plutarch was obviously a bit nonplussed that in Rome, the tenders of the fire had to be virgins. We can note that the unique legal status of the Vestals freed them from usual family ties which made it possible for them to incarnate the collective spirit of the state. The virginity of the Vestals probably represented the purity of this collective; the absence of any evil spiritual influence. In ancient times, feminine virtue was the yardstick of the moral health of a society, and for the Romans, this was a historical reality. Throughout the history of Rome, there are numerous occasions where charges of sexual impurity in women (violation of their vows by the Vestals, or adultery in wives) were declared to be responsible for danger to the state.

This series of strange incidents, spanning a thousand years of Roman history, reveals a world-view deeply rooted in sympathetic magic, where women in their strictly limited societal roles emboedied the state, and the inviolability and control of women was objectified as the iviolability and control of the community.

The virginity of the Vestals wasn’t just the symbol of the state’s safety, it was the guarantee; virginity symbolized the intact state of boundaries and the unity of all families within those collective boundaries. The Vestals, by preserving their virginity, were magically preserving the state. Her unique legal status was less a privilege than a magical function. She was taken away from her family, legal ties dissolved, but she did not become a member of any other family. She did not stop being a woman, but she ceased being like “other women.”

The exchange of women to seal interfamilial bonds and political ties was a marked feature of Roman society. Thus, if the Vestal Virgin was to represent the society as a whole, she must be exterior to all families. Since a basic principle of Roman law was that a woman always belonged to someone, the procedure to free the Vestals from ownership was both complex and comprehensive. … prevented her from being an orphan [which would have damaged her perfect nature] while still guaranteeing that legally and religiously she had no family. … Her masculine rights and privileges were side effects of the act of freeing her from all masculine ownership. … The Vestal was thus the totem of Rome… Her virginity is a type of binding spell familiar from ritual observances in many cultures. … Thus, as long as the Vestal remained intact, so did Rome.

If, and when, a Vestal strayed from the path, she was ritually sacrificed as mentioned above. This was basic scape-goating: deflecting onto the victim the danger of violence. In the historical record, there is a total lack of any protest – even from the Vestals themselves – against the sacrifice of a Vestal Virgin. The Vestal Aemilia, when the sacred fire had been allowed to go out, prayed to Vesta “If anything unholy has been done by me, let the pollution of the city be expiated by my punishment.” In the time of Domitian, Pliny witnessed the execution of the Vestal, Cornelia who was reported to have said on her way to be buried alive: Does Caesar think that I have been unchaste, when he has conquered and triumphed while I have been performing the rites?” Pliny hated Domitian and suspected him of ulterior motives in this case and wrote “I don’t know whether she was innocent, but she certainly acted as if she were innocent. The murder of the Vestal was clearly a form of human sacrifice that was intended to unite the society in a unanimous act of violence that would not result in reciprocal vengeance. And, interestingly, anthropological studies indicate that such a victim should be fundamentally innocent for the sacrifice to be efficacious. However, ritual measures had to be taken to overlay an aura of guilt on the victim in order to engage the unanimity of the society toward the sacrifice. The victim would be charged with grave crimes – generally the more hideous the better – which actually amounted to unloading the collective crimes of the society onto the innocent victim. In short, Rome maintained at all times, in the institution of the Vestal Virgins, both perfect priestesses who, if needed, were at-the-ready perfect victims for the ultimate sacrifice. An example from Livy writing about ancient Rome in 483 BC:

War with the Veii then broke out and the Volsci resumed hostilities. Roman resources were almost more than sufficient for war against an external enemy, but they were squandered by the Romans fighting amon themselves. Adding to everyon’e mental anxiety were heavenly prodigies, occurring in Rome and the countryside, which showed the anger of the gods almost daily. The prophets, after consulting first the entrails and then the birds about both the public and the private omens, announced that there was no other reason for the gods being so moved, except that the sacred rites were not being performed correctly. These terrors finally resulted in the Vestal Virgin Oppia being condemned for incestum and executed.

The Vestal accused of incestum was not just a sinner, but a criminal also. A trial guaranteed the guilt of the surrogate victim and increased the sacrificially necessary guilt. She was made responsible for all the evils that occurred in a time of crisis. However, the death must be left to a natural force so that the polluting presence will be removed without committing a polluting act: thus, being buried alive. No one is personally responsible for the death and thus, no one else is tainted. The Vestals were buried alive with a few days supply of food which Plutarch explicitly says was done so that the death of a sacred person could not be attributed to anyone but herself. Paradoxically, after her death, the executed Vestal Virgin was thought to guard the city she had betrayed. This is further evidence of the practice being a kind of holy sacrifice following strict ritual norms. The Vestal Virgin was devoted, sacrificed, on behalf of the people, to expiate the anger of the gods.

The Vestals were not the only women in Roman society who were sacrificed. Controlling women and their sexuality was equivalent to controlling the state. Dangers made manifest toward the state, either outside or inside, could only be dealt with by the punishment of women. In 331, there was a plague and 20 patrician wives were charged with a poisoning conspiracy. They were forced to drink drugs – a trial by ordeal – and died. A further 170 married women were executed after an investigation. In 296, the cult of Plebeian Chastity was founded and the following year an unknown number of Roman matrons were found guilty of adultery and fined. In 215, following the disaster at Cannae, the Oppian law was passed and the Vestal Virgins Floronia and Opimia were executed together with additional human sacrifices. In 213, an unspecified number of citizens wives were exiled for adultery. In 204, there was a trial by ordeal of Claudia Quinta who was charged with adultery. In 186, the Bacchanalia scandal erupted when thousands of women were executed by their family courts or the state itself. In 184, further trials of those accused of poisonings (men and women). In 180, Hostilia Quarta was condemned for poisoning her husband and three thousand other people were found guilty of poisoning. In 154, Publilia and Licinia were strangled after being tried in family tribunals after being accused of poisoning their husbands. In 113, there was the above mentioned trial and execution (buried alive) of Vestal Virgins.

These eruptions of rage against women reveal a profound fear at the core of Roman society. …the very interchangeability and exchangeability on which Rome was based necessitated that a woman still be attached to, and be a member of, her father’s family for her to have value as an exchange. As a result, she was still a stranger in her marriage family and feared as a stranger… a potential traitoress… This fear, though best known to folklore as centering on the figure of the step-mother, was not confined to her. Rather, since for Rome the children were the husband’s both legally and biologically, all mothers were stepmothers, fostering another’s children. … According to Plutarch the laws of Romulus specified that a husband may divorce his wife only for poisoning his children, counterfeiting his keys, or adultery. This very marginality of women makes them the perfect victims. In times of panic, the society can easily be restored to health by the sacrifice, exile, or punishment of wives, who are central to the family yet not fully members of it; who are necessary to produce children yet expendable… the charge of adultery was the betrayal of all her male relatives, both by birth and by marriage. … We hear not of individual women put on trial but masses. We are told not of monstrous women acting alone but in consort… they formed an anti-society… a witch-world whose values were distorted parodies of the values of patriarchal society… The unpenetrated virgin and the well-regulated wife both embodied the city in the symbolic universes of sympathetic magic .

Obviously, something happened during the formation of the Roman state, and throughout its existence, that made what they were doing entirely rational. My suggestions as to the conditions suffered by peoples around the world in the ancient, formative, Dark Ages are, of course, described in some detail in my previous book, “COMET AND THE HORNS OF MOSES” so I won’t go into that in any detail here. However, I can note here that the cosmic threats were responded to by various peoples according to either their inherent natures or instructions given them by someone.

It was claimed that the Roman religious institutions were established by the legendary king Numa. Plutarch thought he detected a Laconian influence, attributing the connection to the Sabine culture of Numa, for "Numa was descended of the Sabines, who declare themselves to be a colony of the Lacedaemonians." Dionysius of Halicarnassus devotes a much longer space to Numa's religious reforms. In his account the institution of eight priesthoods is attributed to him: curiones, flamines, celeres, augurs, vestals, salii, fetials, pontiffs. Minute prescriptions about the ceremonies and sacrifices were certainly written down in order to perform them correctly and Plutarch records some of these. Plutarch, in like manner, tells of the early religion of the Romans, that it was imageless and spiritual. He says Numa "forbade the Romans to represent the deity in the form either of man or of beast. Nor was there among them formerly any image or statue of the Divine Being; during the first one hundred and seventy years they built temples, indeed, and other sacred domes, but placed in them no figure of any kind; persuaded that it is impious to represent things Divine by what is perishable, and that we can have no conception of God but by the understanding". This last bit seems rather Pythagorean, but the suggested link with the Lacedaemonians (Spartans) made me think of Traveling Salvation Shows.

If you think that itinerant revival preachers, tent evangelists, or faith-healing meetings are a Christian phenomenon, think again: such activities have their roots in the ancient Orientalizing influences on Greece. They were, it seems, a very special kind of traveling skilled artisans whose importance and influence suggests to us the seriousness of the environment in which such could develop and prosper. Seers and doctors were mentioned by Homer as “migrant craftsmen”, individuals which communities were anxious to attract and keep, as the two activities appear to have been closely connected. The fact that these individuals were seen as specialists of a particular craft – partly hereditary, partly acquired by learning and initiation, reveals the important place that religious therapies for individuals, groups, cities and nations held.

The Derveni papyrus, written in about 340 BC by the circle of philosophers that included the ill-fated Anaxagoras who we met in the previous volume, describes individuals who specialize in initiations as “He who make the sacred his craft”. Strabo, too, refers to the “Dionsiac and Orphic crafts”. Even Hippocrates, who was at pains to differentiate between medicine as a science, and psychological catharsis, admitted that migrant seers and healers presented themselves as bearers of special knowledge.

It seems that in those times, as today, charismatic technicians of other-worldly interactions could become widely sought-after personalities. In fact, it appears that they represented the intellectual elite of that time. We get a hint of this in the regard that even Heraclitus had for Pythagoras who was certainly just such a technician. Their special status gave them the ability to freely cross borders and thereby transfer cultural knowledge from one place to another. In the Amarna correspondence from the time of Akhenaten, the kings of Ugarit and Hatti request physicians and seers from the Egyptians. Obviously, they were not yet aware of the fact that Egypt, itself, was falling into dire straits and none of its psychic specialists seem to have been able to counter the deleterious effects of the regime of the last members of the 18th dynasty.

In 670 BC, it is said that Thaletas of Gortyn (Crete), a charismatic musician, delivered Sparta from a plague. Apparently, the presence of an epidemic (epidemia: temporary sojourn), could attract migrant seers as well as physicians. Before him, there was the legendary Karmanor, the priest who purified Apollo after the god had slain the Delphic dragon. Karmanor himself was later killed by Zeus with a thunderbolt. Walter Burkert notes that the name does not appear to be Greek.

I will be going into this in much more detail later, for now, suffice it to say, that it seems to me that there must have been one of these Traveling Salvation Shows at some point back in the mists of time, who gave the Romans their cultic solutions to environmental carnage. And whoever it was, I think we can safely say that we detect schizoidal psychopathy in the implied schizoidal declaration: “Human nature is so bad that order in human society can only be maintained by a strong power created by highly qualified individuals in the name of some higher idea.”

Obviously, the Greek influence can’t be the whole thing. Theodor Mommsen points out that Greece was permeated by cultural influences from the East while Etruria, Latium and Campania “faced West”. So, although the Greeks and the Romans may have had distant ancestors in common, their historical development was dependent on other factors once they had established themselves on the Greek and Italian peninsulas, respectively.

Now that we have a broad overview of the religious underpinnings of Roman society...
 
In a scanned version on archive.org of a copy of The Ancient City from 1877 I found the rules for becoming a member of a family in ancient Rome: From page 51-52 in the chapter on The family.
The members of the ancient family were united by something more powerful than birth, affection, or physical strength; this was the religion of the sacred fire, and of dead ancestors. This caused the family to form a single body, both in this life and in the next. The ancient family was a religious rather than a natural association; and we shall see presently that the wife was counted in the family only after the sacred ceremony of marriage had initiated her into the worship that the son was no longer counted in it when he had renounced the worship, or had been emancipated; that, on the other hand, an adopted son was counted a real son, because, though he had not the ties of blood, he had something better—a community of worship; that the heir who refused to adopt the worship of this family had no right to the succession; and, finally, that relationship and the right of inheritance were governed not by birth, but by the rights of participation in the worship, such as religion had established them. Religion, it is true, did not create the family; but certainly it gave the family its rules; and hence it comes that the constitution of the ancient family was so different from what it would have been if it had owed its foundation to natural affection.
Considering the rules to be followed in our days, it one wishes to get residency or citizenship of another country, as is a common practice today, the ancient perspective is interesting. Today it is about either having enough money to invest or setting up a business or employing people, which is good enough for some countries, or being related by marriage or family and having stayed there long enough, being able to speak the language and follow the secular laws.
 
Obviously, something happened during the formation of the Roman state, and throughout its existence, that made what they were doing entirely rational. My suggestions as to the conditions suffered by peoples around the world in the ancient, formative, Dark Ages are, of course, described in some detail in my previous book, “COMET AND THE HORNS OF MOSES” so I won’t go into that in any detail here. However, I can note here that the cosmic threats were responded to by various peoples according to either their inherent natures or instructions given them by someone.


Okay, so this is all pretty mind-blowing stuff. It has helped me to put into perspective the cult that I have managed to escape, with the help of reading The Wave, SHOTW Vol. 1, the forum, SOTT and the C's.

This cult I was a part of bears so many similarities to the religion that underpinned Ancient Rome that my jaw was on the floor as I was reading Fustel's work.

It may be of interest to note that there appears to be a significant attempted revival of this ancient Fire and Ancestor cult today. Since I was involved in one specific version of this cult, in my ignorant attempt to become a good member, I became familiar with the contemporary intellectuals of this revival. There are four authors in particular, but most likely many more.

In line with the general thrust of Fustel's argument, the worship that these different authors espouse is not monolithic. Each man could be said to be the Father-Priest of a new cult of the home-fire and the ancestral dead, gathering towards themselves a family of worshippers, each family having its own specific rituals.

The men are (1) Stephen Jenkinson in Canada, of Orphan Wisdom School;

The Orphan Wisdom School is crafted specifically for all those people who will fail to live forever, who have come to the idea – or been driven there – that their yearning for a deep life must be tethered to the plough of labour and learning to harrow the hardened field of sorrows and solitary, grey news that has become our corner of this beautiful world, so that children can one day soon be born into to a real, detailed, laboured over Better Day that we ourselves are now unlikely to see.

Because none of this can be done in weekend workshops or homeless conference centres, we ask that you commit yourselves to what we call learning in real time, to gathering together for five days, twice a year, for two years, at the School’s home in the Ottawa Valley in Ontario, Canada, as a start. This a binding deal between us.It is the same commitment I make to you, irrevocable and faithful, and it tethers us honourably to crafting something worthy from our bewilderment and bedraggled dreams. As always, that bewilderment and those dreams are welcome.
There is a programme for graduates that continues beyond this two year introduction.

The learning and the teaching will be part history, all culture, mostly spirit, hugely ancestral, very local, ultimately practicable and hand made, each time about living, working and dying, purposefully delivered and achieved together in the belief that the rudiments of being a true, life serving village person lay waiting for water and light in all of us. If you stay with it long enough your hands will know as much as you will, and even your consternation will be articulate.

The Orphan Wisdom School is for anyone with a desire to be useful to those who will inherit an endangered and often dangerous world. It is for those who have an instinct and a desire to be an ancestor worthy of being claimed. It is for those wishing to learn something of the skills of grace in a graceless time, of mentorship and fierce and exemplary compassion. It is for elders in training.

Young people need and deserve real recognition of their worth and purpose in life, and a living example of enduring discernment and courage for the hard and often empty times that are upon us all. The esteem of parents and friends can only go so far: elders must bring the rest. Grandparents must be grand not only for their children’s children, but for all the young ones coming into the world now. Their status as grand people comes from having wrangled wisdom from experience, and from having become elders more than senior citizens. Grandparents must now be elders even – especially – when no one asks it of them.

Whatever you have read or heard about the Orphan Wisdom School, that and your own many wonders and longings for a saner place in which to plant the little banner of dreams for your coming days, will end up having to be reason and information enough by which you’ll wrangle your decision about attending. There’ll be no other descriptions beyond the ones on the Orphan Wisdom site, no other reading lists or prospecti sent out. No allegations about what you’ll learn or become. No certificate. It isn’t much with which to make your call, I’ll grant you, but fool’s gold is a description of something that hasn’t happened yet, something that would be changed in an instant by your decision to attend.

It is a school that requires no previous experience with living people, dying people or dead people – though you do have experience with all of them – and no particular employment, religion, educational standard or way of life.

The youngest scholar has been maybe fifteen years old, and the oldest about eighty. The place is open to every shape, persuasion, style, language and hue of person with a heart inclined for opening and learning and being undone. Each of us deserve the chance to learn something deep, alive, human, urgent and mandatory. This is at the heart of the Orphan Wisdom School.

Would that our endangered and dangerous days be remembered, years from now, as a time when some gathered and rose up and, truant no more, learned their lives. That is where our learning together will begin to be tethered to something vast and thrilled and burdened with purpose. The School is, you could say, a kind of psychic/poetic craft guild, and the torments and travails of our time – political, personal, primordial – are the timber and stone of the trade.

(2) Martin Prechtel in New Mexico, of Bolad's Kitchen; the following intro from this interview:

Martín Prechtel was raised in New Mexico on a Pueblo Indian reservation where people still lived in old, pre-European ways. His mother was a Canadian Indian who taught at the Pueblo school, and his father was a white paleontologist. Martín loved the culture there, and the land. “I spent the whole of my very early life,” he says, “in a state of weepy terror about the possibility of total annihilation of this beautiful world at the hands of a few white men who couldn’t understand the beauty we had in this way of life.” He began to work against this dangerous, beauty-killing power. “The natives called it ‘white man ways,’ ” he says, “but it was more than that. Its infectious power had eaten the whites, too, and made them its obvious promoter. This horrible syndrome had no use for the truly natural, the wild nature of all peoples.”

In 1970, after his first marriage ended and his mother died, Prechtel went to Mexico to clear his head. Seemingly by accident, he ended up going into Guatemala. He traveled around that country for more than a year before he came to a village called Santiago Atitlán. The village was inhabited by the Tzutujil, one of many indigenous Mayan subcultures, each of which has its own distinct traditions, patterns of clothing, and language.

In Santiago Atitlán, a strange man came up to Prechtel and said, “What took you so long? For two years I’ve been calling you. Let’s get to work!” So began his apprenticeship to Nicolas Chiviliu, one of the greatest of the Tzutujil Mayan shamans.

The apprenticeship lasted several years. As a shaman, Prechtel would learn how to correct imbalances in people’s relationships with the ancestors and the spirits. He also had to learn the Tzutujil language. (Women taught him at first, and because women and men talk differently, he was a great source of amusement when he began to speak in public.)

Though not a native, Prechtel became a full member of the village. He married a local woman and had three sons, one of whom died. When Chiviliu died, Prechtel took his place, becoming shaman to nearly thirty thousand people. He also rose to the public office of Nabey Mam, or first chief. One of his duties as chief was to lead the young village men through their long initiations into adulthood.

Prechtel wanted to stay in Santiago Atitlán forever, but during the time that he lived there, Guatemala was in the throes of a brutal civil war. The ruling government — with its U.S.–backed death squads — had outlawed the thousand-year-old Mayan rites. Ultimately, Prechtel was forced to flee for his life. “I was going to stay,” he says, “but before my teacher died, he asked me to leave so that I wouldn’t get killed. He wanted me to carry on the knowledge that he had passed to me.”

Prechtel brought his family to the U.S., where they “just kind of starved for a while until Robert Bly and men like him found me.” (Bly, a poet active in the men’s movement, has high praise for Prechtel, whom he describes as “a short kind of pony that gallops through the fields of human possibility with flowers dropping out of his mouth.”) Though Prechtel’ s wife decided to return to her native Guatemala, he remained in the U.S. with their children and currently lives not fifty miles from where he grew up.

Prechtel is the author of
Secrets of the Talking Jaguar (Tarcher), in which he writes — musically, clearly, and respectfully — about the indigenous traditions in Santiago Atitlán. He gives glimpses of his training, yet never reveals details that would allow readers to steal the Mayans’ spiritual traditions the way others have stolen their land. In his most recent book, Long Life, Honey in the Heart (Tarcher), Prechtel describes the structure of the village, the Tzutujil priesthood, and everyday village life before the arrival of the death squads. In addition to his writing, Prechtel paints scenes from the daily activities and mythology of the Mayan people and is a musician who has recorded several CDs.

Prechtel appears around the world at conferences on initiation for young men. (“I’m working with women on that, too,” he says, “but it’s a little bit slower — mostly because I’m not a woman.”) He also leads workshops that help people reconnect with their own sense of place and the sacredness of ordinary life. “Spirituality is an extremely practical thing,” he says. “It’s not just something you choose to do on the weekends. . . . It’s an everyday thing, as essential as eating or holding hands or keeping warm in the winter.”

When I went to interview Prechtel at his home in New Mexico, I was embarrassed to find that my tape recorder wasn’t working. Fortunately, his present wife, Hanna, had a recorder I could use. It worked for about forty minutes, then started to run backward. Martín apologized, saying this sort of thing happened all the time. “I just seem to have this effect on machines,” he said. “My dentist won’t let me come in his front door anymore, because I freeze up all his computers.”

I made a note never to travel with him.

Hanna was able to coax the recorder to work again, and we finished the interview. My own tape recorder began working again the next morning, when I was about seventy miles away.


(3) Dr. Daniel J. Foor in North Carolina of Ancestral Medicine,

Ancestral Medicine encourages the embodiment of animist values and practices in ways that are culturally healing, non-dogmatic, and accessible to people of diverse means, ancestries, and geographies. We seek to honor each person’s unique goodness and to fulfill our mission in partnership with the ancestors and the old ones who are the Earth.

Ancestral Medicine is also a business incorporated in the U.S. state of North Carolina (traditional Tsalagi lands) with a team of six full-time staff and over thirty-five part-time ritualists. We offer regular online courses for an international audience, steward a professional network of ancestral healing practitioners, and have guided ancestral healing intensives in eight countries. For more on our priorities see our Core Values, Frequently Asked Questions, the Ancestral Healing Practitioner Code of Ethics and our scholarship application and fund.

Daniel is a teacher and practitioner of practical animism who specializes in ancestral and family healing and in helping folks learn to relate well with the rest of life. His recent ancestors are settler-colonialists to Pennsylvania and Ohio from England, Germany, and Ireland. He is a doctor of psychology, marriage and family therapist, amateur naturalist, life-long student of earth-honoring traditions, and the author of Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing. Since 2005 Daniel has guided ancestor-focused trainings, community rituals, and personal sessions throughout North America. Training as a therapist, living in other cultures, and immersion in different lineages of ritual all inform his kind and non-dogmatic approach to ancestor and earth reverence. He lives with his wife and daughter in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina. For more information see his full bio here.


(4) Dr. Malidoma Patrice Some in Florida:

Malidoma Patrice Somé Phd., West African Elder, author and teacher, as representative of his village in Burkina Faso, West Africa, has come to the west to share the ancient wisdom and practices which have supported his people for thousands of years.

For more than twenty years, Elder Malidoma has shared the Wisdom of his Ancestors and tribal Elders: the Dagara Cosmology, and awakened a deep knowing in the hearts and bones of those who have recognized in his name, his books, his voice, and the Spirit world inviting the renewal of a deep and abiding relationship with all beings on Earth.

Elder Malidoma is the author of several books, including Ritual: Power, Healing and Community, Of Water and The Spirit: Ritual, Magic and Initiation in the Life of an African Shaman, and The Healing Wisdom of Africa: Finding Life Purpose through Nature, Ritual, and Community.

Dr. Somé holds three Master’s degrees and two Doctorates from the Sorbonne and Brandeis University. He is an initiated elder in his village in Dano, Burkina Faso, W. Africa.

He travels throughout the world bringing a message of hope, healing and reconciliation through the powerful tools of ritual and community building.

“It is possible that we have been brought together at this time because we have profound truths to teach each other. Toward that end, I offer the wisdom of the African ancestors so that Westerners might find the deep healing they seek.

The spark of this ancestral flame, which I have brought to the land of the stranger, is now burning brightly. Increasingly, I have been and will be encouraging westerners to embody these traditions as a testimony to the indigenous capacity to assert itself with dignity in the face of modernity. In this way the ancestors will know that this medicine has found a true home- that it is more than an honored guest.
At this critical time in history, the earth’s people are awakening to a deep need for global healing. African wisdom, so long held secret, is being called on to provide tools to enable us to move into a more peaceful and empowered way of being, both within ourselves, and within our communities. The indigenous spirit in each of us is calling for cleansing and reconciliation. The ancestors are responding”. – Malidoma

It would be beyond the scope of my allotted earthly time between work and house chores to give a full exposition of each of these four dude's history, an overview of their writings in general, and how their understanding compares to what Fustel outlined in Ancient City - and also, most importantly in my view, what the implications are of their teachings. Suffice to say, as I was reading Fustel, and attempting to read between the lines, it appears that the cult of the Ancients was a civilizational operating system installed by 4D STS to ensure social control. It struck me as a religious program that included a breeding program. That may be parsing it too simplistically, but that is my overall sense, given the sacrifice of virginal scapegoats, and an entire society based on the fear and feeding of spirits (talk about a recipe for spirit attachments). And it seemed to me as I was reading that these four men are seen as heroes, reforging a lost, ancient connection with the ancestors (if not the fire, which is not as apparent in their writings).

What was (and still is) difficult for me to understand is what a good relationship with our ancestors looks like. The C's have mentioned that ongoing engagement with our ancestors in 5D is of benefit. So what is different about this claim, and the practices of these four ancestral revivalists? In a word - ritual, which the C's have said drain directly to 4D STS. As such, although there is something good in their Aim (re-connecting with the ancestors) the means by which they do it can lead to disastrous results. Especially when one considers the information gathered here about spirit attachments.

These guys haven't yet started sacrificing virgins, as far as I know. But what will they do if there is a comet in the sky and no food, and the spirits that they have got in touch with start calling for blood and sacrifice?

My sense is that these four men represent a preparation of the soil. This is a claim leant feasibility by (1) works like Masquerade of Angels, in terms of individuals being groomed by 4D STS forces (2) the C's strong claim that we humans have been manipulated for hundreds of thousands of years (3) The Wave and SHOTW that demonstrate the way in which religion is the main tool for this manipulation.

So we are in for the massive scaling-down of civilization via the Great Reset, a real plague, food shortages, global economic collapse, a comet - essentially, it's all pointing towards the attempt by the PTB to create the conditions for a New Dark Age. As such, the 4D controllers are busy re-installing an old control program - the ancient cult of fire and ancestors. They are seeding it early to make sure it 'takes'. So my hunch is that these four dudes (and others) are preparing the soil.
 
I've been thinking more about a specific piece in the Fustel material regarding the religion of the Ancients.

I don't have a specific formulation here, but there are some connections to trace - a thread running through the connection between the genius + daemons or demons + heroes + ancestors; the notion of the 'dark twin' that is born at the same time we are; the arrival of conscience; Gudjieff's reciprocal maintenance of the Sun; the 'as above, so below' esoteric maxim; and finally, Nemesis.

Beginning with Fustel:

These human souls deified by death were what the Greeks called demons, or heroes.25 The Latins gave them the name of Lares, Manes, Genii. “Our ancestors believed,” says Apuleius “that the Manes, when they were malignant, were to be called larvae; they called them Lares when they were benevolent and propitious.”26 Elsewhere we read, “Genius and Lar is the same being; so our ancestors believed.”27 And in Cicero, “Those that the Greeks called demons we call Lares.”28

This religion of the dead appears to be the oldest that has existed among this race of men. Before men had any notion of Indra or of Zeus, they adored the dead; they feared them, and addressed them prayers. It seems that the religious sentiment commenced in this way. It was perhaps while looking upon the dead that man first conceived the idea of the supernatural, and began to have a hope beyond what he saw. Death was the first mystery, and it placed man on the track of other mysteries. It raised his thoughts from the visible to the invisible, from the transitory to the eternal, from the human to the divine.

So from this passage, we read that 'Souls deified by death' were called demons, heroes, or genii, and elsewhere Manes or Lares. 'Demons', interestingly enough, did not indicate malignant spirits - this phenomenon was identified by the term 'larvae'. Side note - this distinction may well describe a Knowledge of the real spiritual nature of this world, by giving a warning against improper treatment of the dead. An impoverished understanding of Death (and thus, an impoverished understanding of Time as linear and finite, and not cyclical and creative) would lead to more and more hungry ghosts roaming the world. With all the attendant consequences.

An etymology of the word demon:

c. 1200, "an evil spirit, malignant supernatural being, an incubus, a devil," from Latin daemon "spirit," from Greek daimōn "deity, divine power; lesser god; guiding spirit, tutelary deity" (sometimes including souls of the dead); "one's genius, lot, or fortune;" from PIE *dai-mon- "divider, provider" (of fortunes or destinies), from root *da- "to divide."

The malignant sense is because the Greek word was used (with daimonion) in Christian Greek translations and the Vulgate for "god of the heathen, heathen idol" and also for "unclean spirit." Jewish authors earlier had employed the Greek word in this sense, using it to render shedim "lords, idols" in the Septuagint, and Matthew viii.31 has daimones, translated as deofol in Old English, feend or deuil in Middle English. Another Old English word for this was hellcniht, literally "hell-knight."

The usual ancient Greek sense, "supernatural agent or intelligence lower than a god, ministering spirit" is attested in English from 1560s and is sometimes written daemon or daimon for purposes of distinction. Meaning "destructive or hideous person" is from 1610s; as "an evil agency personified" (rum, etc.) from 1712.

The Demon of Socrates (late 14c. in English) was a daimonion, a "divine principle or inward oracle." His accusers, and later the Church Fathers, however, represented this otherwise. The Demon Star (1895) is Algol (q.v.) .

So what was the effect of this widespread worship of the dead? Why did they pray to their ancestors and make offerings of food to them, and to the fire? What were the early Christians doing, as Laura reports in 'FPTM', with their refrigerium, the meal eaten to honour the birthday or death day of one of their dearly departed? Were these practices related to an understanding of the spiritual nature of reality? It is suggested in Fustel that the Ancients engaged in their practices to receive guidance - and to prevent an increase in the population of hungry ghosts and cataclysms. So there was fear, too - and perhaps a healthy one.

But what was the effect of these offerings? One answer is this - to approach what might be called the possibility of genius. 'Genius' is predicated on the ability to make a connection with our ancestors, to tune ourselves to receive assistance from them as tutelary guides. Genius is possible when we 'resonate with the heroes' - the term 'heroes' pointing to the central importance of myths as transmitters of vital earthly and cosmic information. Genius is divine inspiration. So genius is not what we moderns think it is - defined as a merely personal talent belonging only to lucky individuals.

So the meaning of the term transforms from a spiritual and collective sense to an individual and material one. There is a reductionism there, and an isolationism, an alienation. In our current understanding of the term genius, we can see evidence of a knife - disconnecting the material and the spiritual, and also cutting the individual from the collective, but also cutting apart the cyclical understanding of Time:
genius (n.)late 14c., "tutelary or moral spirit" who guides and governs an individual through life, from Latin genius "guardian deity or spirit which watches over each person from birth; spirit, incarnation; wit, talent;" also "prophetic skill; the male spirit of a gens," originally "generative power" (or "inborn nature"), from PIE *gen(e)-yo-, from root *gene- "give birth, beget," with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups. Sense of "characteristic disposition" of a person is from 1580s. Meaning "person of natural intelligence or talent" and that of "exalted natural mental ability" are first recorded 1640s.

Isn't it curious how genius + gene + generative power are all collected here in one word. If I were to speculate, the consistent feeding of the ancestors is an old form of being in Service to Others. Because this is a type of reciprocal maintenance, we are also fed in return, with inspiration. Our ancestors help and guide us from the other side, resulting in some form of genius, or creative power. Genius is also a way of talking about 'turning on our genes' - blessing all the potential of our DNA, which is properly understood as the gift of our ancestral heritage.

Note that C. 1200, a 'demon' had already become associated with evil. It couldn't be farther from the Latin meaning of daemon, 'a tutelary deity, a guide + one's genius, lot, or fortune + divider, provider of destiny'! So somewhere between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the rise of 'a certain kind' of Christianity, there was a concerted effort to turn demons into something else - something evil. This, in effect, turns all ancestors and tutelary guides into monsters to be hated and feared. They turn into larvae, seeking to feed from us, because we no longer feed them willingly. What is the consequence of this? Not only are there neglected hungry ghosts everywhere, we also stop being 'fed' by our ancestors. Our genius (higher centres?), our genes (sexual centre?), and our creative abilities in the world fall into a state of atrophy and decay.

This leads directly to a discussion of Time, already mentioned. Gurdjieff stated constantly that we humans have a choice to maintain the cosmos - what he calls reciprocal maintenance. In his chapter ' The Holy Planet Purgatory', Gurdjieff states that the 'Most Holy Sun Absolute' is constantly being diminished by the flow of Time - Gurdjieff's name for Time is 'the Merciless Heropass'. This may as well be a mythicized version of the discussion of entropy. But note his use of the term 'Hero'. Again, this is one of the terms used to describe 'human Souls deified by death'. I think this is no accident.

It is by our conscious labours and intentional sufferings that we fully enliven our DNA - this is clear by now with all the research to that effect flying around this forum. This is also the means by which we take on our own portion of the burden of all existence. Is suffering a zero-sum substance? The more we can take on, the less Our Common Father must shoulder himself? And it is the Most Holy Sun Absolute that benefits - life gets to keep on going, fed by our efforts? This is expressed by the understanding in certain religions that in a world without prayer, the sun would not rise again. So one could picture oneself being a cell in the larger cosmic body. We must do all we can to perform the correct functions proper to our placement - to feed what feeds us, help what helps us, serve what serves us. Like a red blood cell, circulating in the body, delivering oxygen. We could also choose not to do our task - and become a parasite. A living larvae. And then the body around us begins to die. That's the choice that Gurdjieff lays at our feet. We are all of cosmic importance - and so the way we treat others, including our ancestors, is of dire consequence.

Now, there is a peculiar notion that I've run across in the work of Martin Shaw and Stephen Jenkinson and psychologist James Hillman, the first two of whom are key players in the mythic 'ancestral revival' circuit mentioned in my post above. I'm only just barely into their material. But this peculiar notion bears mention - the idea is that when humans are born, there is the simultaneous birth of a 'dark twin'. This 'dark twin' is different than the shadow. It is also different than the placenta, whom for some cultures is revered as a 'twin' and treated to a proper burial. The 'dark twin' is also not an external form like an entity of some kind. To be perfectly honest, I don't know exactly what it is... yet. But from what I can surmise from Shaw and Jenkinson, this 'dark twin' is our Genius, our Fortune, our Daemon, and as such, could be crucial to understanding the process of activating our DNA.

From psychologist James Hillman:
“Sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path. You may remember this “something” as a signal moment in childhood when an urge out of nowhere, a fascination, a peculiar turn of events struck like an annunciation: This is what I must do, this is what I’ve got to have. This is who I am.”

The discovery of a life purpose is a crucial ingredient in a life well-lived. For with a “why” to define our existence it is far easier to remain strong amidst the turbulence of life, and to move forward despite the blows of fate which cross our path.

...

It is not necessary to believe in guiding spirits to make sense of this phenomenon. For the daemon can be conceptualized in psychological terms. We can view it as an unconscious psychological complex, a functional cluster of ideas, emotions and associations which exist beyond our conscious awareness and which influence our conscious mind through irrational means. The daemon guides us in the direction of our purpose through intuitions, fantasies, sudden urges, synchronicities, and dreams.

“For the daimon surprises. It crosses my intentions with its interventions, sometimes with a little twinge of hesitation, sometimes with a quick crush on someone or something. These surprises feel small and irrational; you can brush them aside; yet they also convey a sense of importance, which can make you say afterward: “Fate.”

And another:
“Each life is formed by its unique image, an image that is the essence of that life and calls it to a destiny. As the force of fate, this image acts as a personal daimon, an accompanying guide who remembers your calling.

The daimon motivates. It protects. It invents and persists with stubborn fidelity. It resists compromising reasonableness and often forces deviance and oddity upon its keeper, especially when neglected or opposed. It offers comfort and can pull you into its shell, but it cannot abide innocence. It can make the body ill. It is out of step with time, finding all sorts of faults, gaps, and knots in the flow of life – and it prefers them. It has affinities with myth, since it is itself a mythical being and thinks in mythical patterns. It has much to do with feelings of uniqueness, of grandeur and with the restlessness of the heart, its impatience, its dissatisfaction, its yearning. It needs its share of beauty. It wants to be seen, witnessed, accorded recognition, particularly by the person who is its caretaker. Metaphoric images are its first unlearned language, which provides the poetic basis of mind, making possible communication between all people and all things by means of metaphors.”


An interesting parallel in De Salzmann, which highlights the birth of the voice of conscience, or the Real 'I', as a result of the Work:
And if you observe in this way, paying with yourself, without self-pity, giving up all your supposed riches for a moment of reality, perhaps you will suddenly see something you have never before seen in yourself until this day. You will see that you are different from what you think you are. You will see that you are two. One who is not, but takes the place and plays the role of the other. And one who is, yet so weak, so insubstantial, that he no sooner appears than he immediately disappears. He cannot endure lies. The least lie makes him faint away. He does not struggle, he does not resist, he is defeated in advance. Learn to look until you have seen the difference between your two natures, until you have seen the lies, the deception in yourself. When you have seen your two natures, that day, in yourself, the truth will be born.

Another hint may be in the Juan Ramon Jiminez poem 'I am not I':

I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.

So there is an ecology of concepts here - ancestors, an unseen twin, Life purpose, DNA (and therefore sex, creativity and progeny), genius, daemon, conscience, finding one's driving purpose in Life or following our destiny, the devouring function of Time and the reciprocal maintenance of the Sun.

So this is where it gets interesting. What happens when when humans only listen to the dominant culture, deny our inherent daemon-genius-destiny, refuse to feed others and only seek to gorge themselves... and all the other steps in the process of reciprocal destruction? Our sun also has a 'dark twin' - Nemesis. It arrives as a being of wrath when we don't do our Work to be of service. Isn't this a striking similarity to how our ancestors turn to 'larvae' when they go unfed or neglected? And also how we can become significantly psychologically ill if we don't listen to our own conscience? Is this an another case of 'as above, so below'?

And did the Ancients of Fustel's study have access to the Knowledge of the cyclical nature of cosmic catastrophes? Were they employing a method designed to prevent the vicious cycle of reciprocal destruction? Did they seek to prevent the worst of cataclysm by participating in a virtuous cycle of mutual feeding? And was this not just a preventative cycle, but one in which all involved may 'rise with wings as Eagles'?
 
Somehow this seems to fit in this thread...

“She said, 'There is no reason
and the truth is plain to see.'
But I wandered through my playing cards
and would not let her be
one of sixteen vestal virgins
who were leaving for the coast
and although my eyes were open
they might have just as well've been closed

so it was that later
as the miller told his tale
that her face, at first just ghostly,
turned a whiter shade of pale”

(Procol Harum)
 
Last edited:
I've been thinking more about a specific piece in the Fustel material regarding the religion of the Ancients.

I don't have a specific formulation here, but there are some connections to trace - a thread running through the connection between the genius + daemons or demons + heroes + ancestors; the notion of the 'dark twin' that is born at the same time we are; the arrival of conscience; Gudjieff's reciprocal maintenance of the Sun; the 'as above, so below' esoteric maxim; and finally, Nemesis.

Beginning with Fustel:



So from this passage, we read that 'Souls deified by death' were called demons, heroes, or genii, and elsewhere Manes or Lares. 'Demons', interestingly enough, did not indicate malignant spirits - this phenomenon was identified by the term 'larvae'. Side note - this distinction may well describe a Knowledge of the real spiritual nature of this world, by giving a warning against improper treatment of the dead. An impoverished understanding of Death (and thus, an impoverished understanding of Time as linear and finite, and not cyclical and creative) would lead to more and more hungry ghosts roaming the world. With all the attendant consequences.

An etymology of the word demon:



So what was the effect of this widespread worship of the dead? Why did they pray to their ancestors and make offerings of food to them, and to the fire? What were the early Christians doing, as Laura reports in 'FPTM', with their refrigerium, the meal eaten to honour the birthday or death day of one of their dearly departed? Were these practices related to an understanding of the spiritual nature of reality? It is suggested in Fustel that the Ancients engaged in their practices to receive guidance - and to prevent an increase in the population of hungry ghosts and cataclysms. So there was fear, too - and perhaps a healthy one.

But what was the effect of these offerings? One answer is this - to approach what might be called the possibility of genius. 'Genius' is predicated on the ability to make a connection with our ancestors, to tune ourselves to receive assistance from them as tutelary guides. Genius is possible when we 'resonate with the heroes' - the term 'heroes' pointing to the central importance of myths as transmitters of vital earthly and cosmic information. Genius is divine inspiration. So genius is not what we moderns think it is - defined as a merely personal talent belonging only to lucky individuals.

So the meaning of the term transforms from a spiritual and collective sense to an individual and material one. There is a reductionism there, and an isolationism, an alienation. In our current understanding of the term genius, we can see evidence of a knife - disconnecting the material and the spiritual, and also cutting the individual from the collective, but also cutting apart the cyclical understanding of Time:


Isn't it curious how genius + gene + generative power are all collected here in one word. If I were to speculate, the consistent feeding of the ancestors is an old form of being in Service to Others. Because this is a type of reciprocal maintenance, we are also fed in return, with inspiration. Our ancestors help and guide us from the other side, resulting in some form of genius, or creative power. Genius is also a way of talking about 'turning on our genes' - blessing all the potential of our DNA, which is properly understood as the gift of our ancestral heritage.

Note that C. 1200, a 'demon' had already become associated with evil. It couldn't be farther from the Latin meaning of daemon, 'a tutelary deity, a guide + one's genius, lot, or fortune + divider, provider of destiny'! So somewhere between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the rise of 'a certain kind' of Christianity, there was a concerted effort to turn demons into something else - something evil. This, in effect, turns all ancestors and tutelary guides into monsters to be hated and feared. They turn into larvae, seeking to feed from us, because we no longer feed them willingly. What is the consequence of this? Not only are there neglected hungry ghosts everywhere, we also stop being 'fed' by our ancestors. Our genius (higher centres?), our genes (sexual centre?), and our creative abilities in the world fall into a state of atrophy and decay.

This leads directly to a discussion of Time, already mentioned. Gurdjieff stated constantly that we humans have a choice to maintain the cosmos - what he calls reciprocal maintenance. In his chapter ' The Holy Planet Purgatory', Gurdjieff states that the 'Most Holy Sun Absolute' is constantly being diminished by the flow of Time - Gurdjieff's name for Time is 'the Merciless Heropass'. This may as well be a mythicized version of the discussion of entropy. But note his use of the term 'Hero'. Again, this is one of the terms used to describe 'human Souls deified by death'. I think this is no accident.

It is by our conscious labours and intentional sufferings that we fully enliven our DNA - this is clear by now with all the research to that effect flying around this forum. This is also the means by which we take on our own portion of the burden of all existence. Is suffering a zero-sum substance? The more we can take on, the less Our Common Father must shoulder himself? And it is the Most Holy Sun Absolute that benefits - life gets to keep on going, fed by our efforts? This is expressed by the understanding in certain religions that in a world without prayer, the sun would not rise again. So one could picture oneself being a cell in the larger cosmic body. We must do all we can to perform the correct functions proper to our placement - to feed what feeds us, help what helps us, serve what serves us. Like a red blood cell, circulating in the body, delivering oxygen. We could also choose not to do our task - and become a parasite. A living larvae. And then the body around us begins to die. That's the choice that Gurdjieff lays at our feet. We are all of cosmic importance - and so the way we treat others, including our ancestors, is of dire consequence.

Now, there is a peculiar notion that I've run across in the work of Martin Shaw and Stephen Jenkinson and psychologist James Hillman, the first two of whom are key players in the mythic 'ancestral revival' circuit mentioned in my post above. I'm only just barely into their material. But this peculiar notion bears mention - the idea is that when humans are born, there is the simultaneous birth of a 'dark twin'. This 'dark twin' is different than the shadow. It is also different than the placenta, whom for some cultures is revered as a 'twin' and treated to a proper burial. The 'dark twin' is also not an external form like an entity of some kind. To be perfectly honest, I don't know exactly what it is... yet. But from what I can surmise from Shaw and Jenkinson, this 'dark twin' is our Genius, our Fortune, our Daemon, and as such, could be crucial to understanding the process of activating our DNA.

From psychologist James Hillman:


And another:



An interesting parallel in De Salzmann, which highlights the birth of the voice of conscience, or the Real 'I', as a result of the Work:


Another hint may be in the Juan Ramon Jiminez poem 'I am not I':



So there is an ecology of concepts here - ancestors, an unseen twin, Life purpose, DNA (and therefore sex, creativity and progeny), genius, daemon, conscience, finding one's driving purpose in Life or following our destiny, the devouring function of Time and the reciprocal maintenance of the Sun.

So this is where it gets interesting. What happens when when humans only listen to the dominant culture, deny our inherent daemon-genius-destiny, refuse to feed others and only seek to gorge themselves... and all the other steps in the process of reciprocal destruction? Our sun also has a 'dark twin' - Nemesis. It arrives as a being of wrath when we don't do our Work to be of service. Isn't this a striking similarity to how our ancestors turn to 'larvae' when they go unfed or neglected? And also how we can become significantly psychologically ill if we don't listen to our own conscience? Is this an another case of 'as above, so below'?

And did the Ancients of Fustel's study have access to the Knowledge of the cyclical nature of cosmic catastrophes? Were they employing a method designed to prevent the vicious cycle of reciprocal destruction? Did they seek to prevent the worst of cataclysm by participating in a virtuous cycle of mutual feeding? And was this not just a preventative cycle, but one in which all involved may 'rise with wings as Eagles'?

Okay, so here's another interesting piece about this whole dark twin phenomenon. The hypothesis I'm entertaining is that this is a multi-scalar thing. And an intertwined theme here, if I were to attempt to put it into one sentence, is that neglect leads to wrath.

Humans are rumoured to have a 'dark twin' - our daemon, genius, or even conscience, described above. Humans can listen to this inner voice, and honour our inner self - which seems to be one key to growing our Soul, finding out who we truly are. But it's a choice. We can also ignore it, live a life of instant gratification, empty freedom, and sleep - which only attracts tragedy. When we act in Hubris, our inner voice, or our internal guidance system, is the Predator's mind, Gurdjieff's 'formatory apparatus', etc. To use the solar example, our inner voice becomes - or calls - our own personal Nemesis.

'Nemesis' then appears to be a cosmic teaching function on the level of the human being, in 3D. It could be said that this operates on a 3D - 4D interface. Influenced by 4D STS, we sin and hurt and sin and hurt, until we hurt so bad that we awaken to our wretched state, and start to look for another way. Or just keep cycling in sin and hurt, generating the vibrations 4D STS feed upon.

This all has something to do with a relationship with our ancestors, too.

We have the option to relate to our ancestors in a good and meaningful way. This includes prayers of thanks, good will, food offerings, and asking for guidance from the Saintly ones in our bloodline, and our 'spiritual ancestors', too. When we don't relate with them, there can be incredibly dire consequences, according to both the Fustel material, and also the dudes I've been researching in this current 'ancestral revival' thing happening in North America. The 'Manes', as the ancestors are called, turn away from us - and we are influenced instead by the 'larvae', who, through a spirit-attachment process, latch onto us, hijack us, attempt to live through us, and use us a food source.

The 'larvae' - who are they? How did they get to be how they are? Through their own neglect? Neglecting the opportunities of incarnation, not learning to go towards the light upon death, attachment to this world, etc? For some, did they become larvae because their blood relatives neglected 'feeding' (honouring) them after they'd died? At any rate, there's this larvae phenomenon. The basics seems like this - when we neglect our responsibility to feed (reciprocal maintenance) we are fed upon.

There's cosmic teaching function here, with a 3D - 5D interface. To paraphrase St. Matthew, 'to he who gives, all shall be given. To he who takes, all shall be taken.' The actual quote is more like, 'to he who has everything, all shall be given. To he who has nothing, all shall be taken.' So this 'everything' he is speaking about is acquired by feeding, or giving - by Service to Others. The 'everything' mentioned here - what is it? How can one have everything, and receive all? It could be beyond my own 3D thinking brain at this moment. One thing that is clear - by offering our time, our energy, and our suffering here in the material world, the Soul starts to accumulate. Perhaps the 'all' that we are 'given' is a role - a part to play in the cosmic drama as 'a healthy cell in the body of the cosmos' or a Seeker of Truth - and in receiving this, we also get an understanding of ourselves as one tiny, complex part of All and Everything - a part of the whole - one aspect of the diversity that is in unity.

I wonder about the refrigarium, the early Christian practice of eating a meal in the graveyard with one's dearly departed. I'd like to learn more about it. At any rate, connection with 5D ancestors may help tip the balance, despite 4D STS influences, in favour of Soul growth.

I've already spoken about the Sun's dark twin above.

But does the earth have a dark twin? Gurdjieff in Beelzebub's Tales states that the Earth was broken into three pieces due to 'a most unfortunate cosmic accident'. Talk about a bad day at the office! The three pieces are the Earth we know, the Moon, and also an unnamed piece of the Earth somewhere out there. Is this the Earth's dark twin? Side note, we human beings are also apparently a microcosmic reflection of this planetary brokenness - our heart, mind, and body are in a similar state of fundamental disconnect. We are broken three ways, just like the planet! Anyhow, Gurdjieff says that we have a responsibility to feed the Earth - the Doctrine of Reciprocal Maintenance and all that jazz. He has spoken about feeding the Moon - but what about that other fragment of the Earth? According to him, that requires food, too. And it is our responsibility! So there is this theme I'm seeing develop - not just Seeing the Unseen, but the intimately related concept of Feeding the Unfed.

What to say about this dark fragment of the Earth? If there are Soul implications to listening to one's personal daemon, and also relating with and 'feeding' our ancestors, as well as knowing about Nemesis - what is the proper orientation to this (hypothetical) fragment of the Earth, for which we are purportedly responsible? I don't know if there is one, beyond doing the Work that we are doing here. The hypothesis developing here is that neglect leads to wrath. So perhaps a different question might be this - what wrath might be waiting for us in the darker reaches of space where this 'big rocky piece of our responsibility' floats? Does it even exist? How could we possibly discover that?

So it turns out the moon is already said to have a 'dark twin'. A snippet from the 'Food for the Moon' Chapter 76 in The Wave:

‘In the arcane tradition there are two Moons. These pairs have very many names. Such names are usually derived from mythological personifications – yet all these pairs relate to the idea that one Moon is a reflector of sunlight, while the other, if not always in darkness, is invisible. …

‘From the very beginning of civilization, the Moon has been a mystery, because it has always stared down upon the Earth with one single face. As the Moon circles the Earth, it keeps one side of its globular face presented towards humanity. …

‘… Western occultism have tended, until comparatively recent times, to emphasize only the light side of the Moon. Even so, hints of the dark Moon are encapsulated in even the most overt-seeming symbolism.

‘… the archangel Gabriel is the ruler of the Moon – that is, of the light side of the Moon. His role as messenger at the Annunciation is well established, even if his arcane role (symbolized by the white lilies) is only imperfectly understood outside the secret Schools. The lilies of Gabriel are very profound symbols indeed. They are recognized, in the Mysteries, as symbols of the descent of a God. [Laura’s note: Notice that he does not say “the descent of God,” but of “a God.”]

‘Furthermore, in the same Christian tradition, images of the Assumption of the Virgin show the lunar crescent beneath the feet of the Virgin.

‘In these two different symbols, we have a clue to how the Virgin of Light is linked with the angelic ruler of the Moon at the conception of the Child, and with the lunar crescent at her own translation from Earth to Heaven – at her death. It is as though this symbolism was designed to show …’ He paused ‘… to show that the very same lunar forces which announced her destiny as the Mother of God were also lifting her to Heaven, at the end of her life.

‘Now, Gabriel is the Christian equivalent of the personified light Moon. The name is, of course, Hebraic, and we must look to the same language in our search for the name of the Christian dark Moon. This name is Lilith, the mother of the lilin, or brood of demons. We see, then, that it is no great mystery that the angel Gabriel should carry lilies at the Annunciation. There is rarely such a thing as accident in the confluence of sounds in arcane symbolism.’ (Hedsel 2000, 310–311)

So there's the word 'demon' again - but this time used in the contemporary post-Christianized way, as a reference to powerful unseen entities who feed on human beings. It makes one think of the moon crawling with nests of gigantic hungry space larvae! Yum. At any rate, there is an understanding of lunar twins - an invisible or 'dark moon'. This 'invisible moon' is a home to demons, according to Hesdel; or a less sensationalized 'cosmic concentration that feeds on unconscious vibrations' from Gurdjieff; or a 4D STS base, as Laura mentions in the above-quoted chapter of The Wave. Plus, Pink Floyd. Can't leave them out. Anyways, we can see from this loony discussion that the existence of a 'dark twin' doesn't necessitate an actual physical twin but can also gesture to the multidimensional nature of bodies of matter - human bodies, whether in 3D or 5D, and celestial bodies like the Earth, Moon, and Sun.

I don't know if I have any concluding thoughts to this post, aside to say that the cosmic/ecological food web that gathers all of these bodies together is absolutely mind-boggling.
 
You've written some fascinating and thought-provoking posts here, iamthatis, and it occurred to me as I was reading that a little booklet might be put together on this topic.

One is also reminded of Paul's effort to address the concerns of his churches about their dearly departed.
 
Isn't it curious how genius + gene + generative power are all collected here in one word. If I were to speculate, the consistent feeding of the ancestors is an old form of being in Service to Others. Because this is a type of reciprocal maintenance, we are also fed in return, with inspiration. Our ancestors help and guide us from the other side, resulting in some form of genius, or creative power. Genius is also a way of talking about 'turning on our genes' - blessing all the potential of our DNA, which is properly understood as the gift of our ancestral heritage.

Note that C. 1200, a 'demon' had already become associated with evil. It couldn't be farther from the Latin meaning of daemon, 'a tutelary deity, a guide + one's genius, lot, or fortune + divider, provider of destiny'! So somewhere between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the rise of 'a certain kind' of Christianity, there was a concerted effort to turn demons into something else - something evil. This, in effect, turns all ancestors and tutelary guides into monsters to be hated and feared. They turn into larvae, seeking to feed from us, because we no longer feed them willingly. What is the consequence of this? Not only are there neglected hungry ghosts everywhere, we also stop being 'fed' by our ancestors. Our genius (higher centres?), our genes (sexual centre?), and our creative abilities in the world fall into a state of atrophy and decay.

Absolutely fascinating series of posts.

It occurs to me that the contemporary mania* against any form of ethnic solidarity or pride is a further elaboration upon, and deepening of, the neglect of the ancestors that was initiated with the religious and linguistic shifts accompanying the fall of Rome and the rise of "Christianity". Only rather than simply forgetting to feed them, we are led to actively despise them as racists, sexists, homophobes, etc. etc., thus placing us into open conflict with the ancestral spirits with whom we are meant to maintain a mutually supporting relationship. We go to war with the very entities that are meant to strengthen us. As a result, the gradual societal and spiritual decay of the last several centuries accelerates into the rapid collapse that we are living through now.

And it is certainly no accident that those who most enthusiastically embrace this demented ideology are precisely those whose bodies and souls are observably weakest and most fragile. Not only have they cut themselves off from the psychic support the lares might offer - they actively antagonize them, and thereby invite in hosts of demons to feed.

*just a thought: could "mania" share a root with 'mane'?
 
You've written some fascinating and thought-provoking posts here, iamthatis, and it occurred to me as I was reading that a little booklet might be put together on this topic.

One is also reminded of Paul's effort to address the concerns of his churches about their dearly departed.

Thanks for the encouragement! A booklet sounds like a great project. I'll see what I can put together.
 
Absolutely fascinating series of posts.

It occurs to me that the contemporary mania* against any form of ethnic solidarity or pride is a further elaboration upon, and deepening of, the neglect of the ancestors that was initiated with the religious and linguistic shifts accompanying the fall of Rome and the rise of "Christianity". Only rather than simply forgetting to feed them, we are led to actively despise them as racists, sexists, homophobes, etc. etc., thus placing us into open conflict with the ancestral spirits with whom we are meant to maintain a mutually supporting relationship. We go to war with the very entities that are meant to strengthen us. As a result, the gradual societal and spiritual decay of the last several centuries accelerates into the rapid collapse that we are living through now.

And it is certainly no accident that those who most enthusiastically embrace this demented ideology are precisely those whose bodies and souls are observably weakest and most fragile. Not only have they cut themselves off from the psychic support the lares might offer - they actively antagonize them, and thereby invite in hosts of demons to feed.

*just a thought: could "mania" share a root with 'mane'?

Yeah, you bet. It's no wonder this world is so sick right now. Most of the world's population is literally covered with larvae.

About mania and 'Manes' - when in doubt, do an etymology search! It very much looks like you're onto something. Good catch!
mania
late 14c., "mental derangement characterized by excitement and delusion," from Late Latin mania "insanity, madness," from Greek mania "madness, frenzy; enthusiasm, inspired frenzy; mad passion, fury," related to mainesthai "to rage, go mad," mantis "seer," menos "passion, spirit," all of uncertain origin, perhaps from PIE *mnyo-, suffixed form of root *men- (1) "to think," with derivatives referring to qualities and states of mind or thought.

And for the Proto-Indo-European root word 'men', there are a few surprise words that 'men' is a linguistic root for. Very interesting, especially viewed from the angle of reciprocal maintenance, Laura's mythological research, and the information from the C's:

Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to think," with derivatives referring to qualities and states of mind or thought.

It forms all or part of: admonish; Ahura Mazda; ament; amentia; amnesia; amnesty; anamnesis; anamnestic; automatic; automaton; balletomane; comment; compos mentis; dement; demonstrate; Eumenides; idiomatic; maenad; -mancy; mandarin; mania; maniac; manic; mantic; mantis; mantra; memento; mens rea; mental; mention; mentor; mind; Minerva; minnesinger; mnemonic; Mnemosyne; money; monition; monitor; monster; monument; mosaic; Muse; museum; music; muster; premonition; reminiscence; reminiscent; summon.

It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Sanskrit manas- "mind, spirit," matih "thought," munih "sage, seer;" Avestan manah- "mind, spirit;" Greek memona "I yearn," mania "madness," mantis "one who divines, prophet, seer;" Latin mens "mind, understanding, reason," memini "I remember," mentio "remembrance;" Lithuanian mintis "thought, idea," Old Church Slavonic mineti "to believe, think," Russian pamjat "memory;" Gothic gamunds, Old English gemynd "memory, remembrance; conscious mind, intellect."

And there are a few other meanings. Taken together, 'men' can gesture to a complex of (1) 'to think', (2) 'to project', and (3) 'to remain'.

*men- (2)
Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to project."
It forms all or part of: amenable; amount; cismontane; demeanor; dismount; eminence; eminent; imminence; imminent; menace; minacious; minatory; mons; montage; montagnard; monte; mount (n.1) "hill, mountain;" mount (v.) "to get up on;" mountain; mountebank; mouth; Osmond; Piedmont; promenade; prominence; prominent; promontory; remount; surmount; ultramontane.
It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Sanskrit manya "nape of the neck;" Latin mons "mountain," eminere "to stand out;" Old Irish muin "neck," Welsh mwnwgl "neck," mwng "mane;" Welsh mynydd "mountain."

*men- (3)

Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to remain." It forms all or part of: maisonette; manor; manse; mansion; menage; menial; immanent; permanent; remain; remainder.

It is the hypothetical source of/evidence for its existence is provided by: Persian mandan "to remain;" Greek menein "to remain;" Latin manere "to stay, abide."
 
Hi iamthatis, certainly some interesting posts and thoughts on the topic. I thought I'd add a few thoughts in case they might be helpful to your cause.

So from this passage, we read that 'Souls deified by death' were called demons, heroes, or genii, and elsewhere Manes or Lares. 'Demons', interestingly enough, did not indicate malignant spirits - this phenomenon was identified by the term 'larvae'. Side note - this distinction may well describe a Knowledge of the real spiritual nature of this world, by giving a warning against improper treatment of the dead. An impoverished understanding of Death (and thus, an impoverished understanding of Time as linear and finite, and not cyclical and creative) would lead to more and more hungry ghosts roaming the world. With all the attendant consequences.

So what was the effect of this widespread worship of the dead? Why did they pray to their ancestors and make offerings of food to them, and to the fire? What were the early Christians doing, as Laura reports in 'FPTM', with their refrigerium, the meal eaten to honour the birthday or death day of one of their dearly departed? Were these practices related to an understanding of the spiritual nature of reality? It is suggested in Fustel that the Ancients engaged in their practices to receive guidance - and to prevent an increase in the population of hungry ghosts and cataclysms. So there was fear, too - and perhaps a healthy one.

Isn't it curious how genius + gene + generative power are all collected here in one word. If I were to speculate, the consistent feeding of the ancestors is an old form of being in Service to Others. Because this is a type of reciprocal maintenance, we are also fed in return, with inspiration. Our ancestors help and guide us from the other side, resulting in some form of genius, or creative power. Genius is also a way of talking about 'turning on our genes' - blessing all the potential of our DNA, which is properly understood as the gift of our ancestral heritage.

Note that C. 1200, a 'demon' had already become associated with evil. It couldn't be farther from the Latin meaning of daemon, 'a tutelary deity, a guide + one's genius, lot, or fortune + divider, provider of destiny'! So somewhere between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the rise of 'a certain kind' of Christianity, there was a concerted effort to turn demons into something else - something evil. This, in effect, turns all ancestors and tutelary guides into monsters to be hated and feared. They turn into larvae, seeking to feed from us, because we no longer feed them willingly. What is the consequence of this? Not only are there neglected hungry ghosts everywhere, we also stop being 'fed' by our ancestors. Our genius (higher centres?), our genes (sexual centre?), and our creative abilities in the world fall into a state of atrophy and decay.

So this is where it gets interesting. What happens when when humans only listen to the dominant culture, deny our inherent daemon-genius-destiny, refuse to feed others and only seek to gorge themselves... and all the other steps in the process of reciprocal destruction? Our sun also has a 'dark twin' - Nemesis. It arrives as a being of wrath when we don't do our Work to be of service. Isn't this a striking similarity to how our ancestors turn to 'larvae' when they go unfed or neglected? And also how we can become significantly psychologically ill if we don't listen to our own conscience? Is this an another case of 'as above, so below'?

And did the Ancients of Fustel's study have access to the Knowledge of the cyclical nature of cosmic catastrophes? Were they employing a method designed to prevent the vicious cycle of reciprocal destruction? Did they seek to prevent the worst of cataclysm by participating in a virtuous cycle of mutual feeding? And was this not just a preventative cycle, but one in which all involved may 'rise with wings as Eagles'?

Humans are rumoured to have a 'dark twin' - our daemon, genius, or even conscience, described above. Humans can listen to this inner voice, and honour our inner self - which seems to be one key to growing our Soul, finding out who we truly are. But it's a choice. We can also ignore it, live a life of instant gratification, empty freedom, and sleep - which only attracts tragedy. When we act in Hubris, our inner voice, or our internal guidance system, is the Predator's mind, Gurdjieff's 'formatory apparatus', etc. To use the solar example, our inner voice becomes - or calls - our own personal Nemesis.

'Nemesis' then appears to be a cosmic teaching function on the level of the human being, in 3D. It could be said that this operates on a 3D - 4D interface. Influenced by 4D STS, we sin and hurt and sin and hurt, until we hurt so bad that we awaken to our wretched state, and start to look for another way. Or just keep cycling in sin and hurt, generating the vibrations 4D STS feed upon.

We have the option to relate to our ancestors in a good and meaningful way. This includes prayers of thanks, good will, food offerings, and asking for guidance from the Saintly ones in our bloodline, and our 'spiritual ancestors', too. When we don't relate with them, there can be incredibly dire consequences, according to both the Fustel material, and also the dudes I've been researching in this current 'ancestral revival' thing happening in North America. The 'Manes', as the ancestors are called, turn away from us - and we are influenced instead by the 'larvae', who, through a spirit-attachment process, latch onto us, hijack us, attempt to live through us, and use us a food source.

The 'larvae' - who are they? How did they get to be how they are? Through their own neglect? Neglecting the opportunities of incarnation, not learning to go towards the light upon death, attachment to this world, etc? For some, did they become larvae because their blood relatives neglected 'feeding' (honouring) them after they'd died? At any rate, there's this larvae phenomenon. The basics seems like this - when we neglect our responsibility to feed (reciprocal maintenance) we are fed upon.

I wonder about the refrigarium, the early Christian practice of eating a meal in the graveyard with one's dearly departed. I'd like to learn more about it. At any rate, connection with 5D ancestors may help tip the balance, despite 4D STS influences, in favour of Soul growth.

I think that you're on to something here with the idea of honoring the dead, or ancestors as it may be, being important. But, that the who and the how might also be important to distinguish.

From my own experience and research regarding the subject of discarnate entities, both those who had previous lives and the more 'elemental' thoughts forms, I have so far formed the following opinions.

1) Discarnate souls or imprints who have previously been incarnated seem to hang around due to either being lost, afraid, or because they have a strong emotional attachment to someone living. Maybe an unfinished business. Sometimes it seems that the lost ones who do not already have a strong attachment with someone they knew in their life, find someone 'new' to hang around who has some similarity in frequency (similar thinking and feeling). In whichever case, those still here in that way were either unable or unwilling to pass on further as they 'should', and can haunt the living until there is a resolution. I do not believe that they haunt or attach because they were not fed by us per se, but because of ignorance and strong unresolved emotions (good or bad).

I would say that in a healthier system, people (while living) would be better educated about what to expect upon passing. And those loved ones whom are still living when they pass would understand that they need to pass freely to continue their own lessons. Perhaps there should also be an emphasis put on resolving outstanding debts toward the end of life, when possible, and being able to give and receive forgiveness and understanding so that the load is lightened when the time comes. I think the best way to honor our deceased would be by remembering them in the context of their life, and our experiences of them, in an as objective a way as possible. It would seem to me to be the best way to help both them and ourselves. By anchoring truth and gratitude. That would be different from worshiping or deifying in an unrealistic or automatic way, based on fear of their haunting us in a negative way or in hopes that they will haunt us in a helpful way. Which might succeed in anchoring a haunting, but is probably not the most optimal relationship for either party. I think inspiration can only be as good as the reality and reasons it is based on.

Remembering the life of our now deceased loved ones on special days, like their birth or death days (or whenever), with both gratitude and as much of a proper understanding of their history and character as we can, might tune our antennae toward connection to them and the lessons that they have learned. That might help us to also benefit from their lessons, and perhaps, maybe even in a timeless way, our attention toward them (if based on objectivity and understanding), could even help them during their lives, with inspiration from what we have learned. Possibly kind of like how the C's, ourselves in the future, view and inspire us.

With the understanding that our deceased have moved on as appropriate, and are continuing their learning as befits them while we continue ours, then perhaps on special occasions, because of a healthy, balanced, and respectful connection, when we pray for inspiration, they (either their or our 'future' selves) might be able to give better assistance. I think it might be in error to expect that either they or us should try to maintain a constant engagement at this level. Because we are on different levels for the time being.

2) Discarnate entities or elementals who appear to have never been incarnated, seem to be formed, split off, or consolidated when someone somewhere has a very strong thought combined with strong emotion and/or will. It seems to me that such circumstances can lead to giving that thought or feeling a sort of 'life' of its own. But, they seem to need to find someone to resonate with to keep themselves from dissipating. And, because they have enough 'life' of their own, initially, to want to find and influence someone for self-continuation, people should be aware of their existence and not confuse them with ancestors who deserve to be honored. There are also other types of beings, possibly 4D STS in nature who would love to engage and be 'honored'. I.e. Operators and Things.

I think that for the most part, the above are the 'larvae' that is talked about and that most decent souls do not turn into larvae because of neglect. If we neglect the decent souls, theoretically, we might lose the benefit of their experiences and the possible occasional guidance, but I do not believe that it would hurt them at all. I would think it is likely that they are fed by something higher if they are actually of a higher persuasion. If there is something out there that needs to be fed else it turns wrathful, it's more likely to be something that you don't want to feed. Of course, if you are thinking about feeding something higher, like the sun, or our future selves, etc. based on a law of the universe regarding reciprocity or entropy, I think that that can only be done by becoming more conscious ourselves and Working in that direction. Work mostly governs our ability to consciously know and choose which direction we head in. In our case, hopefully toward STO future selves.

If you think about it, it seems that in the most natural order of things, we are mostly intended to feed what is below us in level of consciousness and understanding (we are fed upon, or feed upwards, only depending on our state of being). If done correctly, it benefits both parties in some way. We feed and care for animals because they either nourish us or provide us with companionship and assistance. We feed and care for children, the sick and the elderly more because of our own spiritual imperatives, and that provides us with experience that nourishes our souls. Perhaps as we move up that ladder, assuming an STO one, with each step there is less expectation of return, or avoidance of our own suffering, and more growth in being of service for the sake of it (when it is actually warranted). It might follow then, from the view of those above us in consciousness and understanding, if their purpose is to be more of service to others through free will, to help us grow in consciousness when we meet them halfway, that the more consciousness and ability to help others we grow, the more we fulfill something for in them too. In that case, learning to properly feed those 'below' us (our animals, children, neighbors, etc.) is what also feeds us and those above us (our relatives gone to 5D that we would like to be associated with, our future selves, etc.). Although I do not think it would be necessary for their continued existence or health, only for our own.

Regarding the idea of Nemesis (solar or other), or our own dark twin being called upon by our lack of conscious involvement with the respect to the more cosmic food chain, well, sounds to me like that is just our default state. They are always coming for us :scared:, no need to be called. Perhaps it's only within our power to learn to get out of the way by not feeding the predator's mind (or 4D STS) as is usual for humans, and by learning to give to others properly instead (which I think is what you were suggesting). That might make their jobs a little easier. Lord knows, they could probably use some rest.
 
Hi iamthatis, certainly some interesting posts and thoughts on the topic. I thought I'd add a few thoughts in case they might be helpful to your cause.

















I think that you're on to something here with the idea of honoring the dead, or ancestors as it may be, being important. But, that the who and the how might also be important to distinguish.

From my own experience and research regarding the subject of discarnate entities, both those who had previous lives and the more 'elemental' thoughts forms, I have so far formed the following opinions.

1) Discarnate souls or imprints who have previously been incarnated seem to hang around due to either being lost, afraid, or because they have a strong emotional attachment to someone living. Maybe an unfinished business. Sometimes it seems that the lost ones who do not already have a strong attachment with someone they knew in their life, find someone 'new' to hang around who has some similarity in frequency (similar thinking and feeling). In whichever case, those still here in that way were either unable or unwilling to pass on further as they 'should', and can haunt the living until there is a resolution. I do not believe that they haunt or attach because they were not fed by us per se, but because of ignorance and strong unresolved emotions (good or bad).

I would say that in a healthier system, people (while living) would be better educated about what to expect upon passing. And those loved ones whom are still living when they pass would understand that they need to pass freely to continue their own lessons. Perhaps there should also be an emphasis put on resolving outstanding debts toward the end of life, when possible, and being able to give and receive forgiveness and understanding so that the load is lightened when the time comes. I think the best way to honor our deceased would be by remembering them in the context of their life, and our experiences of them, in an as objective a way as possible. It would seem to me to be the best way to help both them and ourselves. By anchoring truth and gratitude. That would be different from worshiping or deifying in an unrealistic or automatic way, based on fear of their haunting us in a negative way or in hopes that they will haunt us in a helpful way. Which might succeed in anchoring a haunting, but is probably not the most optimal relationship for either party. I think inspiration can only be as good as the reality and reasons it is based on.

Remembering the life of our now deceased loved ones on special days, like their birth or death days (or whenever), with both gratitude and as much of a proper understanding of their history and character as we can, might tune our antennae toward connection to them and the lessons that they have learned. That might help us to also benefit from their lessons, and perhaps, maybe even in a timeless way, our attention toward them (if based on objectivity and understanding), could even help them during their lives, with inspiration from what we have learned. Possibly kind of like how the C's, ourselves in the future, view and inspire us.

With the understanding that our deceased have moved on as appropriate, and are continuing their learning as befits them while we continue ours, then perhaps on special occasions, because of a healthy, balanced, and respectful connection, when we pray for inspiration, they (either their or our 'future' selves) might be able to give better assistance. I think it might be in error to expect that either they or us should try to maintain a constant engagement at this level. Because we are on different levels for the time being.

2) Discarnate entities or elementals who appear to have never been incarnated, seem to be formed, split off, or consolidated when someone somewhere has a very strong thought combined with strong emotion and/or will. It seems to me that such circumstances can lead to giving that thought or feeling a sort of 'life' of its own. But, they seem to need to find someone to resonate with to keep themselves from dissipating. And, because they have enough 'life' of their own, initially, to want to find and influence someone for self-continuation, people should be aware of their existence and not confuse them with ancestors who deserve to be honored. There are also other types of beings, possibly 4D STS in nature who would love to engage and be 'honored'. I.e. Operators and Things.

I think that for the most part, the above are the 'larvae' that is talked about and that most decent souls do not turn into larvae because of neglect. If we neglect the decent souls, theoretically, we might lose the benefit of their experiences and the possible occasional guidance, but I do not believe that it would hurt them at all. I would think it is likely that they are fed by something higher if they are actually of a higher persuasion. If there is something out there that needs to be fed else it turns wrathful, it's more likely to be something that you don't want to feed. Of course, if you are thinking about feeding something higher, like the sun, or our future selves, etc. based on a law of the universe regarding reciprocity or entropy, I think that that can only be done by becoming more conscious ourselves and Working in that direction. Work mostly governs our ability to consciously know and choose which direction we head in. In our case, hopefully toward STO future selves.

If you think about it, it seems that in the most natural order of things, we are mostly intended to feed what is below us in level of consciousness and understanding (we are fed upon, or feed upwards, only depending on our state of being). If done correctly, it benefits both parties in some way. We feed and care for animals because they either nourish us or provide us with companionship and assistance. We feed and care for children, the sick and the elderly more because of our own spiritual imperatives, and that provides us with experience that nourishes our souls. Perhaps as we move up that ladder, assuming an STO one, with each step there is less expectation of return, or avoidance of our own suffering, and more growth in being of service for the sake of it (when it is actually warranted). It might follow then, from the view of those above us in consciousness and understanding, if their purpose is to be more of service to others through free will, to help us grow in consciousness when we meet them halfway, that the more consciousness and ability to help others we grow, the more we fulfill something for in them too. In that case, learning to properly feed those 'below' us (our animals, children, neighbors, etc.) is what also feeds us and those above us (our relatives gone to 5D that we would like to be associated with, our future selves, etc.). Although I do not think it would be necessary for their continued existence or health, only for our own.

Regarding the idea of Nemesis (solar or other), or our own dark twin being called upon by our lack of conscious involvement with the respect to the more cosmic food chain, well, sounds to me like that is just our default state. They are always coming for us :scared:, no need to be called. Perhaps it's only within our power to learn to get out of the way by not feeding the predator's mind (or 4D STS) as is usual for humans, and by learning to give to others properly instead (which I think is what you were suggesting). That might make their jobs a little easier. Lord knows, they could probably use some rest.

Thank you kindly for your thoughts! I feel like there's a whole mountain of research ahead. Gulp. Learning is fun?

You mentioned Operators and Things, which I have not read - would you recommend I read it? Or are there any other sources that you could recommend to help me clarify my thinking here?

I still have yet to dig into the Zarathustra books I have, which Laura recommended earlier this summer when I asked about the Ancestral Revival circuit I've been researching. But they are on the list.

Below are some reflections I've had about the handful of posts I made, with inspiration from your post. There are a lot threads running in the ol' brain right now.

(1) An exploration of Fustel's material as a starting point. The best question might be - is it accurate? What can be learned from it?

Fustel equates Manes, genii, and deamons. But there may well be a good reason why there were different words - that each word designates a separate multidimensional phenomenon. To simply take Fustel without question, as I did in my previous posts, is a mistake. What we are looking at might be more like an 'ecology of spirits', which your post above attests to. A useful analogy is that deer, elk, and moose all belong to the cervidae family. But they are all different creatures. Manes, genii, and deamons may all belong to the same 'family' say, of beneficent spirits - but to claim they are all the same is an unfounded assumption. To this end, my suspicion is that ancestors in 5D and the 'daemon effect' in 3D may be linked, but cannot with confidence be said to be the same.

We cannot know the mind or worldview of the Ancients. This is the usual problem of historical research - how to enter the mind of the Ancients, and see the world through their eyes? This is the manner of approach that contributes to a real understanding. This is what is recommended by Collingwood (if I remember correctly). We have their writings, and now evidence of the spade (which I have been digging into - things have gone a long way since Fustel's time). Cross-cultural examination is useful, too, which Fustel deploys to find similarities and build his case. Extrapolations can be made from this basis. But Fustel leaves out the specificities, and smooths over important questions on behalf of presenting a cohesive narrative. It seems like he is using the data for the narrative, and not crafting a narrative that reflects the data. Good research is objective - which means including an admission of what is not known, what does not fit, and what still rankles.

To understand a little better, in accord with Collingwood's approach, requires source material - in particular, things like (a) fragment 119 from Heraclitus, where he claims that 'A man's character is is daemon', (b) Socrates' claim to be inspired by an 'inner oracle' which he called his daemon, (c) Plato's 'Myth of Er', wherein the daemon receives a good deal of attention, etc. This would include some discussion of Heraclitus, Socrates, and Plato themselves, to interrogate the sources from which this information comes. And also we see evidence only of 'the daemon' in the above sources - not Manes, Lares, genii, larvae, etc.

(2) Another is the change in the meaning of daemon (tutelary guide) to demon (malignant spirit), as an effect of 'a certain kind of Christianity'. Things have come a long way since Fustel's time, but this etymological shift is still with us. And, as I've started to look into it, the etymological shift is more complex than a simple 'reversive blockade' (to use Lobaczewski's term). There were psychological phenomena known as eudaimonia (happiness, joy) and kakodaimonia (mischief, vice). Rather than entities, these were apparently understood to be psychological states.

Is there a certain Church publication that canonized the transformation of 'deamons' to demons - and in effect, 'demonized' ancestor worship? Or are there certain historical Church Fathers to look at? Apparently Tertullian and St. Jerome and their works are the main guys here. Their works can be seen as a representation of the shift at the level of the culture at the time. Whether these Church Fathers caused this change, or simply recorded it, and profited, is a sticky problem.

(3) Then there is the Gurdjieffian question of reciprocal maintenance and whether or not there are in fact energetic or spiritual consequences of this demonization of ancestors.

Your post really opens this up. I am still unsure how to frame this aspect of the discussion.

In my initial post on this thread, I was speculating aloud whether or not the Ancestor cult of Fustel's time was an STS cultural-mythological feeding system. From my first pass, it looked like a combination of (a) a human breeding program and (b) a spirit feeding program, with fear of catastrophe being one central driver of its continuation. It wasn't only that - there was also concern for, and celebration of, the dearly departed. Following from my first reading, I was wondering if the Ancestral Revival of today was a revival of that STS feeding system... prepared on schedule for an End Times scenario.

Laura's response was as follows:
(L) "There is a trend in North America of what appears to be a revival of the pre-Roman ancestor and fire cult described by Fustel." I don't know that I necessarily agree with that. I read your post about it, iamthatis, and it would have taken me a long time to write a response about it. I would have had to go and dig out my Fustel and get into searching the text and everything (and my brain is focused on other things). I don't think that that's necessarily what's going on. I'm not too sure that an ancestor and fire cult is necessarily a bad thing. I guess it depends on how it's... find me this guy. I want to see him while I'm talking to him. [Technical mojinations ensue...] Okay, there he is... Okay, I don't know that I necessarily agree with that view of it that it's a bad thing. And I think that you missed something in your analysis even though it sounded logical. I read it and I thought what you were saying sounded about right, except I had this deep internal reaction that maybe what Fustel was talking about is not quite the same thing. I mean, consider the fact that when we talk about hyperdimensional beings or we talk about the Cs or we talk about communicating or respecting or honoring our own ancestors, those are many of the things they were doing in earlier Christianity. People were concerned about their loved ones who had gone on before. Paul dealt with that several times. The interesting thing about the fire cult - I don’t know how much you've read about Zoroastrianism - but there's a lot of similarities between the ideas of Zoroaster and some of the ancient Roman fire cult ideas. Remember also that Fustel didn't have the whole banana since he wasn't relating this to things such as Zoroaster. But I think the general idea for the Zoroastrians was that the fire... Well, some of them. I can't swear this was true for the Zoroastrians. But the fire was a god itself. Agni or whatever to the Indo-europeans. It was kind of the mediator between human beings and the other gods. It consumed the sacrifice, which meant that it transformed it into something that they could consume. The idea was that the gods couldn't maintain the creation or the order of the world if they were not strengthened or fed or had an interaction with human beings. So, that very well may be true. We know that 4th density consumes energy from human beings. So, whether or not it's necessary for humans to exist in order for the gods to exist (and I use 'gods' loosely), and whether it's necessary for gods to exist for humans to exist... Those things are kind of uncertain. We get things like that from inference. So, I don't know that there is evidence for an ancestor cult being revived in North America. I think most of them are too damn materialistic. I think materialism is their god. And I think it would probably be a good thing if they did start thinking about their ancestors. It might scare them into good behavior once in awhile. Okay, iamthatis, you're off the hot seat now. [laughter] I think you need to study those things just a little bit more to get some clarity on that.

So that's all very interesting. Maybe too interesting! I haven't even begun to think about fire yet. Perhaps that's another tale for another time. At any rate, I went from thinking of the Ancestor cult as an STS feeding system, and then considered it as an STO feeding system in light of the C's remarks about ancestral connection and Gurdjieff's ideas about reciprocal maintenance. Most likely the truth is not so black and white as 'STS or STO'? The motivation, reality-perception, and FRV of those engaged in the practice figures largely in the energetic effects, as you point out.

So yeah, I appreciate your discussion above about the topic of reciprocal maintenance. If I am understanding you correctly, what you suggest is that the offering made to All and Everything might be best construed as vibrational in nature, tuning our protein antennae to 'the best possible future' through acts of intentional suffering and conscious labours. This also includes appreciating our ancestors, connecting with them, and asking for guidance. In short, the Work. This is different from what is outlined in Fustel, and also different from what I've seen from the Ancestral Revival dudes. Instead of protein antenna work, they offer literal protein.

As I wrote in a different post in the Afterlife thread:

[From The Gospel According to Science by Piergiorgio Odifreddi]

"Plato had already remarked in his Laws (X, 909 d): the idea that we can win over a divinity by offerings and prayers is to lower them to the level of a guard dog that we can soften up with a mouthful of food and, in this way, and puts them below the honest man who cannot be bought under the table or via bribes. In one word, for Plato, ritual is a vulgar form of atheism, worse even than the idea that God does not exist or that He does but does not intervene in human affairs."

...


So, there's a lot going on here. My hunch is that Plato's giving a direct warning about the ritualized 'sradda-approach' to feeding the ancestors. One could see how easy it would be for descendants to slip into selfishness. Rather than feeding the ancestors on the basis of gratitude and a true understanding and recognition of who they are, as a link in a great chain of the bloodline, the food offerings are more like demands for good weather. So I think it depends on who is doing it, and why. If it's an unconscious mechanical kinda thing, designed to impose one's will on the world, no bueno.

(4) Another topic is an exploration and discussion of the contemporary Revival of ancestor worship, including its attendant and modernized discussions of the daemonic. The Revival is actually quite widespread. There are a number of public figures and publications in this milieu making a strong claim that yes, there are dire consequences the flow from the demonization of ancestor worship in ages past. This echoes what is stated in the Fustel material - feed, or be fed upon. This topic leads into the 'dark twin' material, too, which is part of the standard fare of the Ancestral Revival camp, and evident in certain myths. I am uncertain, however, if the 'dark twin' is a modern way of talking about daemons, or what.

(5) Your post has also opened another avenue for me - contemporary research of the dearly departed. This includes information from the C's, material pertaining to spirit release therapy, data in the 'Descriptions of the Afterlife' thread, the cross-cultural similarity of Near Death Experiences, and information about 'the other side' coming from 'the other side' provided by mediums, psychics, etc.

(6) And finally, this is all so interesting to me, and there is a ton of material to get into... so how to write a 'booklet' - that somehow doesn't end up as a tome of 600 pages? This is the question of scope. Included in this question of writing is the complex interplay of description (what are we looking at?) and prescription (what should we do?). It will be important for me to maintain the distinction between describing versus making a call for action on the other. At this point it's abundantly clear that accurate description would be a better goal.

(7) I haven't even mentioned Paul! I don't want to forget Paul and the refrigerium either.
 
Thank you kindly for your thoughts! I feel like there's a whole mountain of research ahead. Gulp. Learning is fun?

<snip>

(6) And finally, this is all so interesting to me, and there is a ton of material to get into... so how to write a 'booklet' - that somehow doesn't end up as a tome of 600 pages? This is the question of scope. Included in this question of writing is the complex interplay of description (what are we looking at?) and prescription (what should we do?). It will be important for me to maintain the distinction between describing versus making a call for action on the other. At this point it's abundantly clear that accurate description would be a better goal.

(7) I haven't even mentioned Paul! I don't want to forget Paul and the refrigerium either.

Sounds like you have your work cut out for you. As you read, keep notes with sources and p. numbers. When you start putting it together, it makes it so much easier.
 
You mentioned Operators and Things, which I have not read - would you recommend I read it? Or are there any other sources that you could recommend to help me clarify my thinking here?

It wouldn't hurt, and might actually give you some clues. I’ve heard it theorized that people with schizophrenia suffer from a lack of a certain type of filter. If that is the case, and at least some of them could be a type of 'failed' shaman (as suggested elsewhere), it could be that they are picking up on stuff from the information field, or another density, but that what is being picked up on is being selected by, and then viewed or interpreted through the lens of, subjective feeling. So instead of a working filter, or tuned antennae, their own subjective feelings drive them nuts. Whatever they pick up on ends up as not only useless to them but detrimental. They do not seem to have any conscious control over whom (or what) they interact with, which leads to a state of, essentialy, a type of possession by thoughts that are not precisely their own. At any rate, it might be useful to consider some cases as examples of how things can go wrong when someone's ability to connect to the many and varied signals out there exceeds their being.

Another good one might be The Origins of the World's Mythologies, if you haven't already read it. I think it gives a good feel for how very old (possibly even timeless!) some of these myths of gods, heroes, catastrophes, and demons, etc. are. It also left me with the idea that not only may there be different types of myth befitting different types of people, at different periods of time, but that the ones we're talking about here (Laurasian) are generally both progressive and cyclical in nature. So, cyclical yet progressive in their storyline, and also cyclical and progressive in how people understand them at any given time. And so, I thought, maybe that is the natural cycle of things, and we should not get overly caught up in believing that any one stage of the story, or understanding of it, is the 'best'. But instead understand it from a wider view as the way things work. The cycle of human learning. In other words, maybe there isn't a one size fits all as far as myths and religions go, or for what is best, but to each their own depending on who and when they are. And I don't mean that we shouldn't search out and find what befits us best ourselves, but just not to try apply it to everyone. Or to see where everyone went 'wrong'.


Fustel equates Manes, genii, and deamons. But there may well be a good reason why there were different words - that each word designates a separate multidimensional phenomenon. To simply take Fustel without question, as I did in my previous posts, is a mistake. What we are looking at might be more like an 'ecology of spirits', which your post above attests to. A useful analogy is that deer, elk, and moose all belong to the cervidae family. But they are all different creatures. Manes, genii, and deamons may all belong to the same 'family' say, of beneficent spirits - but to claim they are all the same is an unfounded assumption. To this end, my suspicion is that ancestors in 5D and the 'daemon effect' in 3D may be linked, but cannot with confidence be said to be the same.

Yes, perhaps more like an 'ecology' of 'spirits'. Or thought forms, hyperdimensional beings, etc. One possibility is that some of these beneficient 'spirits' don't have very much to do with our ancestors. At least not as we commonly think of the souls of our departed, i.e. ghosts. Well, maybe they do relate in some way, if time does not really exist, but let's stick within the framework of space and time for now! Anyway, if most souls that have been incarnated here in the world as we know it today were incarnated to learn 3D lessons, and we might suppose that in the proper order of things, quite a few of them go to 5D for contemplation before being reincarnated for more learning, they shouldn't really be hanging around to make our lives easier. They may be able to offer a little comfort or inspiration before or during their contemplation, but that could be it. Okay, so maybe the period of contemplation is timeless in a way, and therefore their 'essence' available forever from our point of view, but I digress, we are staying within the framework of time. Anyway, generally, the job of assisting man from a higher level has been given to 'angels' in Christian religion.

Angels are sometimes said to be the very good souls of the departed who are currently in heaven, but more often, I think, they are said to be residents of heaven and helpers of God. That may be just another way to say residents of 4D, 5D, and 6D who are of service to others. They are not necessarily the souls of our dearly departed. This might be closer to what is meant by daimons.

There are several other types in the ecology of spirits. Fairies, aliens, etc. But it appears that throughout time it has been understood, to one extent or another, that there are beings other than humans that populate the earth. And, that they come in more or less two different persuasions. I think it might be a mistake to try to narrow them all down to our ancestors (as we are understanding them) and to expect that they are all here to help us (in a way we would like).


(2) Another is the change in the meaning of daemon (tutelary guide) to demon (malignant spirit), as an effect of 'a certain kind of Christianity'. Things have come a long way since Fustel's time, but this etymological shift is still with us. And, as I've started to look into it, the etymological shift is more complex than a simple 'reversive blockade' (to use Lobaczewski's term). There were psychological phenomena known as eudaimonia (happiness, joy) and kakodaimonia (mischief, vice). Rather than entities, these were apparently understood to be psychological states.

Is there a certain Church publication that canonized the transformation of 'deamons' to demons - and in effect, 'demonized' ancestor worship?
Or are there certain historical Church Fathers to look at? Apparently Tertullian and St. Jerome and their works are the main guys here. Their works can be seen as a representation of the shift at the level of the culture at the time. Whether these Church Fathers caused this change, or simply recorded it, and profited, is a sticky problem.

I would say that it might have been a little of both. Maybe as man became more and more materialistic and self-centered, based on a long string of choices in that direction, the meaning of daimon could have changed to reflect the reality of the situation. People could have gotten themselves into a negative feedback loop until the daimons they were most in resonance with were actually 'demons'. It would not necessarily be that the actual helpers turned to 'larvae', but that as we turned away from understanding and being of service, the connection with larvae was more appropriate. That would have a lot to do with psychological states and states of being.

So, it might not have so much to do with the 'demonizing' of ancestors being a causative agent for the mess we're in, but rather that, along the way, our forgetting of their importance as teachers and companions, as well as the forgetting of our own history and immortal spiritual natures, worked in to the overall trend. There may have been some purpose about it. But free will dictates that for the most part, we would probably not have just been innocent bystanders.

I would imagine that there may have been times throughout history where connection to those others realms, and our understanding of them, was a little clearer. Though I'd also think that the state of being of both individual and collective man determines the clarity of connection and to what we are connected with. Perhaps relearning a proper respect for, and knowledge of, our history and ancestors could help those who are interested in such things, but I think that most blind or automatic worship cannot lead very far in a positive direction.

(3) Then there is the Gurdjieffian question of reciprocal maintenance and whether or not there are in fact energetic or spiritual consequences of this demonization of ancestors.

Maybe the 'forgetting' of ancestors might be more the case we are talking about. And, I would think that that would definitely have some consequences. But again, that forgetting might be as much a consequence itself, of an overall decent into materialism, as it is the cause.

In my initial post on this thread, I was speculating aloud whether or not the Ancestor cult of Fustel's time was an STS cultural-mythological feeding system. From my first pass, it looked like a combination of (a) a human breeding program and (b) a spirit feeding program, with fear of catastrophe being one central driver of its continuation. It wasn't only that - there was also concern for, and celebration of, the dearly departed. Following from my first reading, I was wondering if the Ancestral Revival of today was a revival of that STS feeding system... prepared on schedule for an End Times scenario.

Well, there might have been a big catastrophe (or several!) in the past. I would think that this would be bound to create a big trauma, and also a concern for, and remembrance of, the dearly departed. I would also think it's possible that this might make man, being superstitious by nature but lacking in real understanding, conflate the remembering of the event and their departed with warding off another.

Maybe the original idea was to remember the dead and the reason they died to avoid it happening again, but the reason got lost over time. And, it's also possible that people are meant to forget. So that they can rediscover.

Quote from L: ....But I think the general idea for the Zoroastrians was that the fire... Well, some of them. I can't swear this was true for the Zoroastrians. But the fire was a god itself. Agni or whatever to the Indo-europeans. It was kind of the mediator between human beings and the other gods. It consumed the sacrifice, which meant that it transformed it into something that they could consume. The idea was that the gods couldn't maintain the creation or the order of the world if they were not strengthened or fed or had an interaction with human beings. So, that very well may be true. We know that 4th density consumes energy from human beings. So, whether or not it's necessary for humans to exist in order for the gods to exist (and I use 'gods' loosely), and whether it's necessary for gods to exist for humans to exist... Those things are kind of uncertain. We get things like that from inference. So, I don't know that there is evidence for an ancestor cult being revived in North America. I think most of them are too damn materialistic. I think materialism is their god. And I think it would probably be a good thing if they did start thinking about their ancestors. It might scare them into good behavior once in awhile. Okay, iamthatis, you're off the hot seat now. [laughter] I think you need to study those things just a little bit more to get some clarity on that.

I haven't read enough of the Zoroastrian material yet to say very much, but I would guess that if 'fire', or the way and process of transformation, transforms one from one state of being to another, and this transformation agent and process is a form of God working, our state of being and our choices are what determines what kind of 'smoke' we transform into. Which might also determine which side of creation finds our energy delicious.

As I wrote in a different post in the Afterlife thread:




[From The Gospel According to Science by Piergiorgio Odifreddi]

"Plato had already remarked in his Laws (X, 909 d): the idea that we can win over a divinity by offerings and prayers is to lower them to the level of a guard dog that we can soften up with a mouthful of food and, in this way, and puts them below the honest man who cannot be bought under the table or via bribes. In one word, for Plato, ritual is a vulgar form of atheism, worse even than the idea that God does not exist or that He does but does not intervene in human affairs."

...


So, there's a lot going on here. My hunch is that Plato's giving a direct warning about the ritualized 'sradda-approach' to feeding the ancestors. One could see how easy it would be for descendants to slip into selfishness. Rather than feeding the ancestors on the basis of gratitude and a true understanding and recognition of who they are, as a link in a great chain of the bloodline, the food offerings are more like demands for good weather. So I think it depends on who is doing it, and why. If it's an unconscious mechanical kinda thing, designed to impose one's will on the world, no bueno.

Indeed, and it not only lowers the purpose of our helpers to those who might be bribed (though some might actually like that!), but it lowers us as well. Thinking that bribery is our only hope takes away our responsibility to do and to learn, and to cultivate a healthier humility based on understanding rather than fear.

So that's all very interesting. Maybe too interesting! I haven't even begun to think about fire yet. Perhaps that's another tale for another time. At any rate, I went from thinking of the Ancestor cult as an STS feeding system, and then considered it as an STO feeding system in light of the C's remarks about ancestral connection and Gurdjieff's ideas about reciprocal maintenance. Most likely the truth is not so black and white as 'STS or STO'? The motivation, reality-perception, and FRV of those engaged in the practice figures largely in the energetic effects, as you point out.

I would think so.

So yeah, I appreciate your discussion above about the topic of reciprocal maintenance. If I am understanding you correctly, what you suggest is that the offering made to All and Everything might be best construed as vibrational in nature, tuning our protein antennae to 'the best possible future' through acts of intentional suffering and conscious labours. This also includes appreciating our ancestors, connecting with them, and asking for guidance. In short, the Work. This is different from what is outlined in Fustel, and also different from what I've seen from the Ancestral Revival dudes. Instead of protein antenna work, they offer literal protein.

Pretty much. It's tempting to think there may be an easier way out, but so far it doesn't look like it! Proper learning of and respect for our history, for our ancestors and our spiritual nature, may be a big part of the puzzle. And proper ancestor 'worship' can be important, but I doubt it's the whole banana. We must learn to choose consciously, and to work toward what we choose.

(4) Another topic is an exploration and discussion of the contemporary Revival of ancestor worship, including its attendant and modernized discussions of the daemonic. The Revival is actually quite widespread. There are a number of public figures and publications in this milieu making a strong claim that yes, there are dire consequences the flow from the demonization of ancestor worship in ages past. This echoes what is stated in the Fustel material - feed, or be fed upon. This topic leads into the 'dark twin' material, too, which is part of the standard fare of the Ancestral Revival camp, and evident in certain myths. I am uncertain, however, if the 'dark twin' is a modern way of talking about daemons, or what.

Sounds like it might be a materialistic interpretation of something genuine. It seems that everyone is fed upon until they learn to 'feed' actively. To feed properly what is 'below' us and to feed properly upwards by becoming the type of food that something STO would appreciate.

(5) Your post has also opened another avenue for me - contemporary research of the dearly departed. This includes information from the C's, material pertaining to spirit release therapy, data in the 'Descriptions of the Afterlife' thread, the cross-cultural similarity of Near Death Experiences, and information about 'the other side' coming from 'the other side' provided by mediums, psychics, etc.

Another one might be to look into the thread regarding Hostage to the Devil for more info on the types of energy and thinking that do not have our best interests at heart.

(6) And finally, this is all so interesting to me, and there is a ton of material to get into... so how to write a 'booklet' - that somehow doesn't end up as a tome of 600 pages? This is the question of scope. Included in this question of writing is the complex interplay of description (what are we looking at?) and prescription (what should we do?). It will be important for me to maintain the distinction between describing versus making a call for action on the other. At this point it's abundantly clear that accurate description would be a better goal.

I think it is usually the case! Hope this helps, and good luck!
 
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