Showing posts sorted by relevance for query LUPERCALIA. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query LUPERCALIA. Sort by date Show all posts

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Valentines Day Hour Of The Wolf

The ancient Roman orgiastic festival of Lupercalia, was transformed into St. Valentine by Christianity and then into Valentines Day by the English finally to become dominated by commercial American Greeting Card and Confectionery interests in the 19th Century.


The youths then donned loincloths made from the skin of the goat and led groups of priests around the pomarium, the sacred boundary of the ancient city, and around the base of the hills of Rome. The occasion was happy and festive. As they ran about the city, the young men lightly struck women along the way with strips of the goat hide. It is from these implements of purification, or februa, that the month of February gets its name. This act supposedly provided purification from curses, bad luck, and infertility.
http://www.jonfoster.com/illustration%20images/illustration%20images1%20copy/lupercalia.gif

LUPERCAŹ¹LIA, one of the most ancient Roman festivals, which was celebrated every year in honour of Lupercus, the god of fertility. All the ceremonies with which it was held, and all we know of its history, shows that it was originally a shepherd-festival (Plut. Caes. 61). Hence its introduction at Rome was connected with the names of Romulus and Remus, the kings of shepherds. Greek writers and their followers among the Romans represent it as a festival of Pan, and ascribe its introduction to the Arcadian Evander. This misrepresentation arose partly from the desire of these writers to identify the Roman divinities with those of Greece, and partly from its rude and almost savage ceremonies, which certainly are a proof that the festival must have originated in the remotest antiquity. The festival was held every year, on the 15th of February,a in the Lupercal, where Romulus and Remus were said to have been nurtured by the she-wolf; the place contained an altar and a grove sacred to the god Lupercus (Aurel. Vict. de Orig. Gent. Rom. 22; Ovid. Fast. II.267). Here the Luperci assembled on the day of the Lupercalia, and sacrificed to the god goats and young dogs, which animals are remarkable for their strong sexual instinct, and thus were appropriate sacrifices to the god of fertility (Plut. Rom. 21; Servius ad Aen. VIII.343).b Two youths of noble birth were then led to the Luperci, and one of the latter touched their foreheads with a sword dipped in the blood of the victims; other Luperci immediately after wiped off the bloody spots with wool dipped in milk. Hereupon the two youths were obliged to break out into a shout of laughter. This ceremony was probably a symbolical purification of the shepherds. After the sacrifice was over, the Luperci partook of a meal, at which they were plentifully supplied with wine (Val. Max. II.2.9). They then cut the skins of the goats which they had sacrificed, into pieces; with some of which they covered parts of their body in imitation of the god Lupercus, who was represented half naked and half covered with goat-skin. The other pieces of the skins they cut into thongs, and holding them in their hands they ran through the streets of the city, touching or striking with them all persons whom they met in their way, and especially women, who even used to come forward voluntarily for the purpose, since they believed that this ceremony rendered them fruitful, and procured them an easy delivery in childbearing. This act of running about with thongs of goat-skin was a symbolic purification of the land, and that of touching persons a purification of men, for the words by which this act is designated are februare and lustrare (Ovid. Fast. II.31; Fest. s.v. Februarius). The goat-skin itself was called februum, the festive day dies februata, the month in which it occurred Februarius, and the god himself Februus.

http://www.greeklandscapes.com/images/athens_museum/DSC00839.jpg
Robert Esiner in his provocative study; Man into Wolf associates the Lupercalia leather eros and public S&M rituals with the modern phenomena of lycanthropy;werewolfism and vampirism. Which was brilliantly portrayed in the movie the Howling, one of the most under-valued cult werewolf films of the eighties.

MAN INTO WOLF 

AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION

OF SADISM, MASOCHISM, AND LYCANTHROPY

In analysing the basic factors leading to sadism and maso-
chism Dr. Eisler draws attention to what he describes as 'a feeble
sympathetic resonance', the lack of emotional response, the
insanity affecting altruistic feeling which forms so large a part
of the constitution some of us describe as the psychopathic per-
sonality. This, however, according to Eisler, is not simply a
throw-back to primeval savagery, for, as he shows, primitive
man in his primeval forest was not a killer but rather a peaceful
creature le bon sauvage. In confirmation of this fact the author
mentions numerous small tribes who have never as yet heard
of or encountered war. Killing and being killed has been a
developmental process whereby the carnivorous, predatory
packs, the ancestors of the hunting and game-seeking tribes,
have preyed on the vegetarian, frugivorous, peace-loving herds.
Eisler elaborates his theme by utilizing Jung's conception of
archetypal race memories. Such memories may be not only
ancestral, but may occur even in the sub-human animal strata



So this valentines day let your inner wolf out.

http://www.jayfife.com/images/art/werewolf.jpg

SEE:

A Little Eros For Valentine's Day


Passover Song




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Monday, February 14, 2022

HAPPY LUPERCALIA

One Good Thing: The Left Hand of Darkness showed us that the greatest romances in life can be friendships

Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1969 sci-fi tour de force can still teach us something about human connection.

The cover for the 1969 version of The Left Hand of Darkness.
 Walker & Company (NYC)

Not everyone celebrates Valentine’s Day — some folks will opt to celebrate Galentine’s or Palentine’s with their friends instead. Nowadays, more and more people are reconsidering prevailing ideas of who the significant others in our lives should be — particularly by choosing lifelong relationships with friends, as chosen family, and by radically challenging the accepted norms of intimacy and romance (notably in queerplatonic relationships).

Indeed, what if our biggest romances were not with romantic partners, but instead with our best friends? In The Left Hand of Darkness, famed novelist Ursula K. Le Guin depicts just such a possibility through the relationship between Genly Ai and Therem Harth rem ir Estraven.

What we think of as “romance” is usually just a story about two people (typically cisgender and heterosexual men and women) falling in romantic love, and entering into an exclusive (and often sexual) romantic relationship (particularly marriage). This narrow conception of romance in society is known as amatonormativity. As Rice University philosophy professor Elizabeth Brake argues in her book Minimizing Marriage, we are all pressured to pursue amatonormativity in our own lives. This happens at the expense of other relationships, such as our friendships and our relationships with ourselves.

The Left Hand of Darkness fundamentally challenges amatonormativity. The story is premised on Ai, the Earth-born protagonist, attempting to get the planet of Gethen to join the Ekumen, an intergalactic alliance. Through his envoy mission to build connections and trust with the human-like Gethenians — including one Gethenian leader in particular, Estraven — Le Guin asks: What if an entire society was built without formal marriage, child rearing, or relationship roles? What if we had profoundly deep yet non-romantic relationships outside the binary roles of “man” and “woman”? Over time, Ai realizes that he must let go of his preconceived notions on gender, sex, and relationships in order to really understand and communicate with Estraven.

The Left Hand of Darkness, a sci-fi tour de force — which grapples with topics like first contact, nationalism, Taoist philosophy, and prophecy — is, at its core, a story about connection, and the difficulty of communicating and building relationships with other people. The story’s poignancy comes from Ai and Estraven working through mutual misunderstanding and cultural and linguistic gaps to build a relationship of profound trust, acceptance, and love. It’s been over 50 years since the book’s release in 1969, but the romance between Ai and Estraven continues to serve as an inspiration for becoming intimate beyond amatonormative ideas of soulmates and marriage, and has lessons anyone can strive for in their own relationships.

Initially, Ai is unable to connect with and trust Estraven, because the latter, like all Gethenians, is androgynous; neither “male” nor “female” as humans from Earth are assigned at birth. (Note: Le Guin uses “he/his/him” pronouns to refer to the Gethenians because at the time she wrote the novel, she felt they were “genuinely generic.” After facing much criticism and self-reflection, she later came to have second thoughts about that choice.) As Ai notes over dinner with Estraven in the very first chapter:

“… I thought that at table Estraven’s performance had been womanly … Was it in fact perhaps this soft supple femininity that I disliked and distrusted in him? For it was impossible to think of him as a woman … and yet whenever I thought of him as a man I felt a sense of falseness.”

It becomes apparent that Ai has a serious sexism, misogyny, and homophobia problem, and this directly gets in the way of his job of communicating with the Gethenians and gaining their confidence. Writer Charlie Jane Anders observed that “[Ai is] curious and open-minded about everything, except for the huge areas where his mind has been long since closed.”

Estraven, meanwhile, is a steadfast ally to Ai in his mission of connecting Gethen to the Ekumen. At great personal sacrifice, he supports Ai throughout the story, although the latter does not realize this until much later. Estraven has difficulty conveying his intentions because of Gethenian social codes that Ai does not fully comprehend. On top of that, Ai communicates with Estraven in ways that come off as arrogant, obtuse, and even insulting. Estraven eventually realizes that “[Ai] is ignorant of us: we of him.”

Due to said ignorance, Ai ends up in a prison farm. Estraven saves him from certain death and the story reaches its climax as the two must traverse a massive, glacial tundra to escape back to Estraven’s country. It is here, hauling a sledge, gear, and themselves across hundreds of miles of Arctic desert for months, that the two work through their long-held misunderstandings and begin to truly understand one another. Particularly, as Estraven works to communicate in ways easier for Ai to grasp, Ai realizes that he has to curb his gendered views and masculine insecurities to get closer to Estraven. When he gets sick or exhausted, Ai learns to appreciate Estraven’s concern and not take offense to it, as well as be more honest about his own limits.

And it is during their shared sub-Arctic isolation that Ai finally comes to see Estraven as he had always wanted to be seen:

“Until then I had … refused [Estraven] his own reality … he was the only one who had entirely accepted me as a human being: who … [gave] me entire personal loyalty, and who therefore had demanded of me an equal degree of recognition, of acceptance … I had been afraid to … give my trust, my friendship to a man who was a woman, a woman who was a man.”

What’s profound about Ai and Estraven’s relationship is that they get closer as they get past amatonormative norms of what it means to be intimate. Although worn down to the bone, they learn to communicate more in fewer words, overcoming many close calls on the ice through mutual trust. Strikingly, while there is sexual tension, they choose not to have sex with one another, and — contrary to everything we have been taught about romance — that actually makes them trust each other more:

“For it seemed to me, and I think to him, that it was from the sexual tension between us, admitted now and understood, but not assuaged, that the great and sudden assurance of friendship between us rose: a friendship so much needed by us both in our exile, and already so well proved in the days and nights of our bitter journey, that it might as well be called, now as later, love.”

The book’s title is emblematic of their relationship, as they transcend thinking of the other person as an unintelligible alien and instead come to view one another as a friend and partner — as their left hand. And through their romance, Le Guin explores a world beyond the constraints of gender and sex, as well as beyond the cultural limitations we impose on our relationships based on those things. As Ai realizes at the end of the story, true connection comes when we not only adjust to another’s world, but also unsettle our own bodies and realities to make room for that world.

Ultimately, The Left Hand of Darkness teaches us that we are each alien to one another — inhabiting a vast, unique cosmos in space that others can barely hope to comprehend when crossing paths. But in the deep expanse of that cold darkness, simultaneously, always, exist the infinite bright stars of possibility to build true connection and warmth.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin is available everywhere books are sold. For more recommendations from the world of culture, check out the One Good Thing archives.

Monday, July 03, 2006

The Horned God

Lets see last month we had the the satanic panic about the birth of the anti-christ on 06/06/06 .





He apparently made an appearance at the end of the month at the fashion walkways in Milan. No not the anti-christ but the Great God Pan. Who did not die contrary to the wish of his Christian detractors

The Gods of old are silent on their shore,

Since the great Pan expired, and through the roar

Of the Ionian waters broke a dread

Voice which proclaimed "the Mighty Pan is dead."

How much died with him ! false or true --- the dream

Was beautiful which peopled every stream

With more than finny tenants, and adorned

The woods and waters with coy nymphs that scorned

Pursuing Deities, or in the embrace

Of gods brought forth the high heroic race

Whose names are on the hills and o'er the seas.

Aristomenes -- by Lord Byron


The return of the horned god and the rebirth of paganism in the public meme of pop culture.


Art reflects and resolves the eternal human dilemma of order versus energy. In the west, Apollo and Dionysus strive for victory. Apollo makes the boundary lines that are civilization but that lead to convention, constraint, oppression. Dionysus is energy unbound, mad, callous, destructive, wasteful. Apollo is law, history, tradition, the dignity and safety of custom and form. Dionysys in the new, exhilarating but rude, sweeping all away to begin again. Apollo is a tyrant, Dionysus a vandal. Every excess breeds its counterreaction. So western culture swings from point to point on its complex cycle, pouring forth its lavish tributes of art, word and deed. We have littered the world with grandiose achievements. Our story is vast, lurid, and unending. (Sexual Personae, pp. 96-7) Apollo, Dionysus and Camille



The return of the repressed, as it began with the advent of the modernist era of last century, a century that saw the rebirth of magick.


Pan being the conciousness of liberty is the inspiration of libertines and libertarians.
In ancient times they used to say that those who had lifted the veil of physical phenomena had seen the great god Pan. The upheavals of our time that have revealed a solution of continuity in the evolution of mankind have given rise to a panic literature. Dada is without doubt a pessimistic movement. But its pessimism is based on the danger of human ambitions. It is in de la Rochefoucald and Schopenhauer that we must search for the preliminaries to an international agreement. Dada is the only possible link between men since its fundamental principle consists in being right about nothing. Not to know Dada is not to know our time. In a century when Lenin falls after Wilson, Dada has nothing that can surprise us. Dadas are deliberately out of their depth. But if they are fools they are not stupid. They say nothing for a laugh and take nothing seriously.Art As Anarchy

Picasso never lost his sense of art as "magical," that is, a defense against inner and outer reality, and, more crucially, a way of influencing or controlling, and even changing, them, that is, modifying the reality of one’s internal objects -- the spirits within oneself -- and of external objects, which have their own spirits. This is sheer fantasy -- hence what I call fantastic realism, for it involves both the defense of fantasy and what Freud called "omnipotence of thought," the magical thinking that is characteristic of childhood. It survives in art, as he said -- especially in modern magical/fantastic art, of which Picasso’s is an extreme example, especially his Surrealist-inspired work of the ‘30s. As Charles Brenner writes, the child assumes that "all the objects" in its "environment. . . have thoughts, feelings and wishes just as he himself does. All nature is animate until experience, and his parents, tell him otherwise."(3) When Picasso said that "I use things as my passions tell me"(4) he shows his reluctance -- inability? -- to give up childhood thinking. It seems particularly evident in the still lives that proliferate throughout his art, from Guitar on a Table (1915) through Mandolin and Guitar (1924) to Still Life with Horned God (1937), and beyond. The objects in these pictures, whether natural or man-made, not only seem to be alive, but to have an inner life, that is, to be tense with inner drama.
And the goat-gods like Pan have their origin in the working and lower classes.

Momus. This is really most gratifying. Such encouragement is 4 precisely what I should have expected of a king of your exalted spirit; I will mention the name. I refer, in fact, to Dionysus. Although the mother of this truly estimable demi-god was not only a mortal, but a barbarian, and his maternal grandfather a tradesman in Phoenicia, one Cadmus, it was thought necessary to confer immortality upon him. With his own conduct since that time, I am not concerned; I shall have nothing to say on the subject of his snood, his inebriety, or his manner of walking. You may all see him for yourselves: an effeminate, half-witted creature, reeking of strong liquor from the early hours of the day. But we are indebted to him for the presence of a whole tribe of his followers, whom he has introduced into our midst under the title of Gods. Such are Pan, Silenus, and the Satyrs; coarse persons, of frisky tendencies and eccentric appearance, drawn chiefly from the goat-herd class. The first-mentioned of these, besides being horned, has the hind-quarters of a goat, and his enormous beard is not unlike that of the same animal. Silenus is an old man with a bald head and a snub nose, who is generally to be seen riding on a donkey; he is of Lydian extraction. The Satyrs are Phrygians; they too are bald, and have pointed ears, and sprouting horns, like those of young kids. When I add that every one of these persons is provided with a tail, you will realize the extent of our obligation.Works of Lucian, Vol. IV: The Gods in Council






Pan(Greek, Roman):
Io Pan, the shout in the hills,
Io Pan, the hooves on the rocks,
Io Pan the song in the wild:
Io Pan, Io Pan.
Io Pan, the scattering of the flocks,
Io Pan, the singing of the pipes,
Io Pan, the roaring in the fields:
Io Pan, Io Pan.
Io Pan, the goat,
Io Pan, the man,
Io Pan, the god:
Io Pan, Io Pan.

Song by Aphra Behn

Pan, grant that I may never prove
So great a Slave to fall in love,
And to an Unknown Deity
Resign my happy Liberty:
I love to see the Amorous Swains
...Unto my Scorn their Hearts resign;
With Pride I see the Meads and Plains
...Throng'd all with Slaves, and they all mine:
Whilst I the whining Fools despise,
That pay their Homage to my Eyes.


Hymn to Pan


SING his praises that doth keep
Our flocks from harm.
Pan, the father of our sheep;
And arm in arm
Tread we softly in a round,
Whilst the hollow neighbouring ground
Fills the music with her sound.

Pan, O great god Pan, to thee
Thus do we sing!
Thou who keep'st us chaste and free
As the young spring:
Ever be thy honour spoke
From that place the morn is broke
To that place day doth unyoke!

John Fletcher

Hymn Of Pan

Percy Bysshe Shelley

 From the forests and highlands
We come, we come;
From the river-girt islands,
Where loud waves are dumb,
Listening to my sweet pipings.
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle bushes,
The cicale above in the lime,
And the lizards below in the grass,
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,
Listening to my sweet pipings.

Liquid Peneus was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion’s shadow, outgrowing
The light of the dying day,
Speeded by my sweet pipings.
The Sileni and Sylvans and Fauns,
And the Nymphs of the woods and waves,
To the edge of the moist river-lawns,
And the brink of the dewy caves,
And all that did then attend and follow,
Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo,
With envy of my sweet pipings.

I sang of the dancing stars,
I sang of the dƦdal earth,
And of heaven, and the giant wars,
And love, and death, and birth.
And then I changed my pipings—
Singing how down the vale of MƦnalus
I pursued a maiden, and clasp’d a reed:
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!
It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed.
All wept—as I think both ye now would,
If envy or age had not frozen your blood—
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

Thoreau's Flute



by Louisa May Alcott (written after Thoreau's death)

We sighing said, "Our Pan is dead;
His pipe hangs mute beside the river
Around it wistful sunbeams quiver,
But Music's airy voice is fled.
Spring mourns as for untimely frost;
The bluebird chants a requiem;
The willow-blossom waits for him;
The Genius of the wood is lost."

Then from the flute, untouched by hands,
There came a low, harmonious breath:
"For such as he there is no death;
His life the eternal life commands;
Above man's aims his nature rose.
The wisdom of a just content
Made one small spot a continent
And tuned to poetry life's prose.

"Haunting the hills, the stream, the wild,
Swallow and aster, lake and pine,
To him grew human or divine,
Fit mates for this large-hearted child.
Such homage Nature ne'er forgets,
And yearly on the coverlid
'Neath which her darling lieth hid
Will write his name in violets.

"To him no vain regrets belong
Whose soul, that finer instrument,
Gave to the world no poor lament,
But wood-notes ever sweet and strong.
O lonely friend! he still will be
A potent presence, though unseen,
Steadfast, sagacious, and serene;
Seek not for him -- he is with thee."

(Henry's flute is on display in the Concord Museum. It's made of
fruitwood, a warm reddish-brown wood. It has metal stops on it, and
Henry's and his father's names carved into it - Amy Belding Brown)

Pan - Double Villanelle

by Oscar Wilde

O goat-foot God of Arcady!
This modern world is grey and old,
And what remains to us of thee?


No more the shepherd lads in glee
Throw apples at thy wattled fold,
O goat-foot God of Arcady!


Nor through the laurels can one see
Thy soft brown limbs, thy beard of gold,
And what remains to us of thee?


And dull and dead our Thames would be,
For here the winds are chill and cold,
O goat-foot God of Arcady!


Then keep the tomb of Helice,
Thine olive-woods, thy vine-clad wold,
And what remains to us of thee?


Though many an unsung elegy
Sleeps in the reeds our rivers hold,
O goat-foot God of Arcady!
Ah, what remains to us of thee?

II


Ah, leave the hills of Arcady,
Thy satyrs and their wanton play,
This modern world hath need of thee.


No nymph or Faun indeed have we,
For Faun and nymph are old and grey,
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!


This is the land where liberty
Lit grave-browed Milton on his way,
This modern world hath need of thee!


A land of ancient chivalry
Where gentle Sidney saw the day,
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!


This fierce sea-lion of the sea,
This England lacks some stronger lay,
This modern world hath need of thee!


Then blow some trumpet loud and free,
And give thine oaten pipe away,
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!
This modern world hath need of thee!



Pan With Us
Robert Lee Frost

Pan came out of the woods one day,--
His skin and his hair and his eyes were gray,
The gray of the moss of walls were they,--
And stood in the sun and looked his fill
At wooded valley and wooded hill.

He stood in the zephyr, pipes in hand,
On a height of naked pasture land;
In all the country he did command
He saw no smoke and he saw no roof.
That was well! and he stamped a hoof.

His heart knew peace, for none came here
To this lean feeding save once a year
Someone to salt the half-wild steer,
Or homespun children with clicking pails
Who see so little they tell no tales.

He tossed his pipes, too hard to teach
A new-world song, far out of reach,
For sylvan sign that the blue jay's screech
And the whimper of hawks beside the sun
Were music enough for him, for one.

Times were changed from what they were:
Such pipes kept less of power to stir
The fruited bough of the juniper
And the fragile bluets clustered there
Than the merest aimless breath of air.

They were pipes of pagan mirth,
And the world had found new terms of worth.
He laid him down on the sun-burned earth
And raveled a flower and looked away--
Play? Play?--What should he play?

The image ā€œhttp://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/BRGPOD/227559~Pan-Piper-Illustration-from-Les-Mythes-by-Paul-Valery-Published-1923-Posters.jpgā€ cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.


Athens, Democracy and Humanism

490 BCE To punish mainland Greeks for their support of the rebellion in Asia Minor, Darius the Great of Persia sends a fleet across the Aegean Sea and lands soldiers near Marathon, twenty-six miles north of Athens. A runner covers the distance to announce the arrival of the Persians. A coalition of city-states defeats the Persians at Marathon, and the Persians withdraw. In Athens, the god Pan is said to have given the Greeks their victory, to win back from the Athenians their devotion, which he had seen as diminishing.

Soon it was said that the god Pan had given the Athenians their victory by his causing panic among the Persians. It was said that Pan had done so after having seen a slack in devotion to him among the Athenians, Pan wanting to regain their devotion - a tactic different from Yahweh's reaction to the lack of devotion he had found among his Hebrews, and one that apparently worked better.

The Original of Religions by Sir Isaac Newton
Mars is sometimes called Mars Silvanus & thence Silvanus or Silenus is the same God with Mars or Bacchus for both were drunkards, & Pausanias tells us the oldest Satyrs were called Sileni, & Diodorus that Silenus was the first king of Nysa where Bacchus was born & that they were contemporary. Whence it follows that they were originally the same person though afterwards the two names became split into two persons, & the one made the Tutor & companion of the other. Another name of this God was Pan or (as the Latines called him) Faunus. For Pan was a sheepherd & painted like a Satyr & by consequence he was an Arabian. The p Note: p Phurnutus de nat. Deor. in Baccho')" Goat was sacred to Bacchus & satyrs were his perpetual companions & the ancients used to paint the Gods in the form of such animals as were sacred to them. Dionysus saith pPhurnutus, was delighted with the sacrifice of Goates Ī“Ī¹Ī± Ļ„Īæ ’ĪµĪ±Ļ…Ļ„ĪæĪ½ ’ĪµĪ¹Ī½Ī±Ī¹ Ļ„ĪæĪ½ Ļ„ĻĪ±Ī³ĪæĪ½ because he himselfe was a Goat. He was h Note: h Herod. l. 2') one of the 8 first Egyptian Gods, lived i Note: i Diodor. l. 1. p. 16.a.')" with them in Ɔgypt in the days of Osyris & in their war with the Giants was among them & was then so terrible to their enemies that he is ever since accounted the author of terror & Panicus terror is still a Proverb: d Note: d Apud Anonymum de incredibilibus Fab. 11.')" Polienus commemorates that Pan first found out military order & constituted the right wing & the left (whence his effigies was formed with horns, & that he was the first that by wisdome & art cast terror. He was k Note: k Epiimenides Aristippus & alij apud Natalem Comitem l. 5. c. 6.') the son of Iupiter & l Note: l Theocritus in Phurnutus de nat. Deor. in Paus Thyrside') addicted to hunting, & carried in his hand a siccle which he used in pruning vines. All which characters can agree to none but Chus the God of wine & war. He was worshipped in Egypt by none but the Mendesij, a people of the lower Egypt where the Arabian Sheepherds sometimes reigned.

Commentary on Bacon's Wisdom of the Ancients
& Lord Bacon's Interpretation of Myths
by Manly P. Hall

Wisdom of its own nature being the principle incorruptible, the relationship of knowledge and learning to wisdom becomes important. Knowledge and learning are expressions of the ascent of human intelligence rising along the steps of what Bacon called his "Pyramid of Pan." Knowledge is like the rungs of a ladder upon which men climb. It is also a road with many paths as in the table of Thebes in which persons of every walk of life, every degree of intelligence, every type of conviction are groping along;always in search of that which is better. They are constantly striving toward wisdom. Their strivings are forever changing.

Bacon, being somewhat of a scientist, liked to point out that the strivings of science are forever changing. One day w have one belief, the next day another. One scientist supports another, a third contradicts them both. Yet each one ina way is dedicated to truth, but to each truth is only what he is capable of experiencing. Therefore, Bacon points out that the greatest handicap to the advancement of learning is the human mind. Here he comes very close to the concepts of Buddha. He points out that as long as the individual is in captivity to the tryranny of mind, mind will hold him to the conditions with which it is familiar. The biologist will continue to grope along the lines of biology, the physicist along the lines of physics, the astronomer will continue to build larger lenses with which to view the heavens; but all these are not going to end directly in wisdom.

Paperback

(ISBN-13: 9780521578929 | ISBN-10: 0521578922)

Shaftesbury’s Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times was first published in 1711. It ranges widely over ethics, aesthetics, religion, the arts (painting, literature, architecture, gardening), and ancient and modern history, and aims at nothing less than a new ideal of the gentleman. Together with Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Addison and Steele’s Spectator, it is a text of fundamental importance for understanding the thought and culture of Enlightenment Europe. This volume presents a new edition of the text together with an introduction, explanatory notes and a guide to further reading.



Midas, and other Folktales of Type 782

Montesquieu, Temple of Gnidus: The Online Library of Liberty

Hume, The Natural History of Religion (1757)

IV. Enlightenment and Religion

It was an age of reason based on faith, not an age of faith based on reason. The enlightenment spiritualized the principle of religious authority, humanized theological systems, and emancipated individuals from physical coercion. It was the Enlightenment, not the Reformation or the Renaissance that dislodged the ecclesiastical establishment from central control of cultural and intellectual life. by emancipating science from the trammels of theological tradition the Enlightenment rendered possible the autonomous evolution of modern culture. Diderot said, if you forbid me to speak on religion and government, I have nothing to say. Hence natural science occupied the front of the stage.

Most of the philosophes wrote on natural science. To Diderot, d'Holbach and the encyclopedists all religious dogma was absurd and obscure. LeMettrie and d'Holbach were consistent determinists. Voltaire disagreed with them and said they had a dogmatism of their own. Diderot too insisted on the free play of reason. But he was an unashamed pagan and believed in a kind of pantheism or pan-psychism, not pure atheism or materialism. He was humanistic, secular, modern and scientific. He expected from his method a regeneration of mankind.

English deism, however, was more pervasive in the Enlightenment. It emphasized an impersonal deity, natural religion and the common morality of all human beings. Deism was a logical outgrowth of scientific inquiry, rational faith in humanity, and the study of comparative religion. All religions could be reduced to worship God and a commonsense moral code. There was a universal natural religion.

Yet, it was David Hume, the Englishman, who cut the ground from under his deist friends (Natural History of Religion). Natural religion rested on the basic assumption that man is guided by the dictates of reason. Mind is the scene of the uniform play of motive. The motives of man are quantitatively and qualitatively the same at all times and in all places. An empirical study of the nature of man, said Hume, reveals not an identical set of motives but a confusion of impulses, not an orderly cosmos but chaos. The elemental passion, hopes and fears is the root of religious experience. Religions may be socially convenient but being rooted in sentiment they lack the validity of scientific generalization. A rational religion is a contradiction in terms. Hume here comes close to demolishing the entire rationalist philosophy of the Enlightenment--its natural rights, its self-evident truths and its universal and immutable laws of morality.

Voltaire is in the middle between the materialism of the Encyclopedists and the skepticism of Hume. His ruthless and comic deflation of theological sophism prevented him from recognizing the deepest drives of Catholicism. He conveyed the power of intellect to his generation, but also saw the limitations of reason. Reason was, after all, a poor instrument, but it was the only weapon that raised man above the animals. He believed in the argument from design or "first cause." But this no longer sufficed Diderot and Hume. Voltaire accepted the classical ideal of the brotherhood of man and the universal morality of man. He was essentially a humanist--the greatest humanist of the Enlightenment. He had not the depth of David Hume or Immanuel Kant, but they could not have done his work. Voltaire had only one absolute value: the human race.

The central theme of the Enlightenment is the effort to humanize religion. All philosophes rejected original sin. Here Pascal became a problem for them. For Pascal used their method of analytic logic to prove the existence of original sin and the utter inability of the unaided human reason o solve the problem without accepting the authority of faith. How do you explain the "double nature" of mankind? It becomes intelligible only through the doctrine of the fall of man. Pascal haunted Voltaire all his life. The cruel laughter of the Candide could not suppress the problem of evil. In the upshot he accepted Pascal's analysis of human nature. By becoming an agnostic he became prisoner of Pascal's argument--reason without faith ends in skepticism.

Rousseau had a more original solution to Pascal's problem. In his two discourses he painted a picture of depravity of society that would have delighted Pascal. If he accepted degeneration how was he to explain radical evil? He discovered a new agent of degeneration--the "fall of man"--not god or individual man but society. Thus salvation comes through the social contract. Man must save himself. In social justice is the meaning of life. It was neither a theological or metaphysical solution but a modern solution.

GK CHESTERTON: THE EVERLASTING MAN
The idea was concealed, was avoided was almost forgotten, was even explained away; but it was never evolved. There are not a few indications of this change in other places. It is implied for instance in the fact that even polytheism seems often the combination of several monotheisms. A god will gain only a minor seat on Mount Olympus, when he had owned earth and heaven and all the stars while he lived in his own little valley. Like many a small nation melting in a great empire, he gives up local universality only to come under universal limitation. The very name of Pan suggests that he became a god of the wood when he had been a god of the world. The very name of Jupiter is almost a pagan translation of the words 'Our Father which art in heaven.' As with the Great Father symbolized by the sky, so with the Great Mother whom we still call Mother Earth. Demeter and Ceres and Cybele often seem to be almost incapable of taking over the whole business of godhood, so that men should need no other gods. It seems reasonably probable that a good many men did have no other gods but one of these, worshipped as the author of all.


Poetry

Syrinx, by John Lyly

RPO -- William Wilfred Campbell : Pan the Fallen

32. Endymion. Keats, John. 1884. The Poetical Works of John Keats

Solitude -- from Walden by Henry Thoreau, with notes and analysis

RPO -- Algernon Charles Swinburne : Atalanta in Calydon

La Muse malade by Charles Baudelaire

'Pan and Luna' :: A poem by Robert Browning :: PoetryConnection.net

A Musical Instrument by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Aleister Crowley 'Hymn To Pan'

Aleister Crowley 'Pan to Artemis'


Other References

Folklore: Pan

Chapter 43. Dionysus.The Golden Bough

Golden Bough Chapter 49. Ancient Deities of Vegetation as Animals ...

God of the Witches
by Margret Murray

The Temple of Solomon the King

The Goat Foot God and Dion Fortune

Witchcraft Today By Gerald B. Gardner

Pan (mythology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Capricorn the Goat

" On the Destiny of the Soul" by FS Darrow

JSTOR: The Survival of Pan

Many sculptures in Manhattan are linked to important dates in U.S. or world history. Here are a few for May; Time to Panic

Carnival Carnaval Mardi Gras Bacchanalia Lupercalia

Bacchus Autobiography of a Demi-god

Dionysian Mysteries - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Karl Marx and Human Self-Creation | libcom.org library

A Time of Reconquest: History, the Maya Revival, and the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas


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