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Note: these excerpt threads are
subject to continual revision and updating as opportunity and priority
permits
Walter Burkert: "Language development means nothing less than the advent of a common mental world, allowing not only for common actions and common feelings but for common thoughts and plans, concepts and values. All humans henceforth are linked to an uninterupted chain of tradition, taking over the mental worlds of their elders, working on them and passing them on. Religion, defined at the level of communication, belongs to this mental world, and by virtue of its seriousness it claims preeminence... | ...signs function to bridge the distance between the world and the individual, even if they remain intermediates and may even obstruct more direct access. Signs come from without but get their meaning from the living psyche; they refer to a reality which they represent in relation to the recipient... The meaning of signs is produced by the observer..." [24|157] CREATION of the SACRED "The form of the tale is not produced by reality, but by language, whence its basic character is derived: linearity. Every tale has a basic element of poiesis, fiction. Myth, then, within the class of traditional tales, is nonfactual story-telling. This keeps us close to the sense of the Greek word mythos as contrasted with logos: logos, from legein, 'to put together,' is assembling single bits of evidence, of verifiable facts: logos didonai, to render account in front of a critical and suspicious audience; mythos is telling a tale while disclaiming responsibility: ouk emos ho mythos, this is not my tale, but I have heard it elsewhere. Just by disregarding the question of truth one may enjoy myth, or wonder, and start thinking. Yet myth is generally held to be not a passing enjoyment, but something important, serious, even sacred... | Natural language, after all, is the language of living beings... Of course, even if action programs are not a privlege of the human race, only man can speak about them. Actions are represented by the verb; and the verbal root, the 'zero form' of the the verbs, in most languages--including English, German, French, Latin, Greek, and Turkish--is the imperative; and communication by imperatives is more primitive, and more basic, than communication by statements. The deepest deep structure of a tale would, then, be a series of imperatives: 'get,' that is: 'go out, ask, find out, fight for it, take and run.' And the reaction of an audience to a tale is in perfect accordance with this: under the spell of a thrilling tale, we will ourselves perform one by one the actions described --in idle motion, of course. Thus communication in the form of action sequences, in the form of a tale, is so basic and elementary that it cannot be traced to 'deeper' levels; we may note, in passing, the parallel with dreaming, which also involves action patterns in idle motion..." [3-4|16] Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual "The fundamental form of communication for humans is language; hence signs are appropriated and translated into the experience of language. The abundance of signs turns into a plethora of voices. A feeling of universal empathy may prevail, as if every being, everywhere, were telling a message-to those who understand. Indistinct sounds tend to become speech for the charismatics. Some oracles worked directly through the voices of persons 'possessed,' whose speech was thought actually to emanate from unseen superior partners. Speech presupposes speakers; signs seem to presuppose some great signator, a universal signifier who has established the meanings we are summoned to understand... | ...originally it was not the images that created worship, but religious rituals that created images for common orientation--rituals of veneration made explicit and special by the visible 'sign' produced by the artist. Note that in Latin a divine statue is just called the 'sign,' signum. The link between the mental world and natural environment is the body. Rituals are strategies to control the body's behavior. Hence the mental world tends to assert its seriousness by working its will on the body..." [160-161|166-167] CREATION of the SACRED "The main action is a struggle for power as the combat theme outgrows the quest frame. There are two reversals, from superiority to desperate inferiority, and from inferiority to triumphant superiority. This final superiority displays itself in four 'codes': man with weapon against unarmed savage; the sober against the drunkard; the seeing against the blind; the master of language against the stupid. Thus the myth contains the triumph of cleverness against brute force, set in the elementary experience of trap and escape; but there is more to it. Ever since I was a child I have been angry with Odysseus for his sacrificing the good ram to whom he owes his life. But if the tale is seen within the general structure of the 'quest,' the object to be gained is precisely the flocks themselves, edible animals, and the solemn meal is the logical conclusion: the sacrifice. We find the combat myth entailed in the quest for food. This sheds light on the curious detail of the escape from the cave; in many parallels this is done by putting on sheepskins, and this masquerade may well be the original. To gain the edible animals, man has to assimilate himself to them. To be eaten, or not to be eaten but to eat, these are two sides of the basic process of life. Man eats animals, and consumes them disturbing the balance of life to make up for this myth introduces an agent who preserves the flocks and eats men. The ogre, master of animals, is a term necessitated by structural logic... But in this tale, in the text of the Odyssey, there is a remarkable historical clue: the weapon manufactured by Odysseus, the spear hardened by fire. This weapon is superflous. Odysseus has his sword, he even considers killing the sleeping orge with it, thus he could evidently blind his eye quite easily with his sword. But the tale postulates more special means. The wooden spear, hardened by fire, is, historically, the primordial weapon of man... What is more important, they persisted in ritual, notably in Rome... to kindle a fire by drilling remained a magical procedure to escape distress in Europe down to modern times. Whether the Cyclops myth was connected with anything similar is an open question; we have no documents earlier than Homer; to think of puberty intiations or the magic of blacksmiths remains possible, but these associations are unverifiable..." [33-34] Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual "It is true, and characteristic, that tricky humans immediately take the next step and make cheating by oaths a fine art... He is not alone. 'to give words,' verba dare in Latin means to deceive; the very word 'sense,' sensus, means the opposite of verba. The formula 'what I feel I am saying' was introduced to give weight to mere words. But how to be sure about feelings? To acheive reduction of complexity, to establish fixed and univocal meaning, acts of speech cannot suffice... Add terrifying expressions to demonstrate seriousness and provoke hair-raising anxiety; even this will leave well-versed partners rather cool. It is necessary to get beyond the closed semantic universe of language. For this purpose two concomitant strategies have been devised: the use of witnesses to guarentee a shared mental world, and the use of ritual to create realistic signs, to affix an ineradicable seal by the imprinting function of awe... As our mental world is controlled by common knowledge, so do independent witnesses guarentee the truth. Note that the same Indoeuropean root wid-, meaning 'to see' and hence 'to know,' is used both in the English word witness and in ancient Greek word histor. But humans are frail, both physically and mentally; they are likely to forget or even to lie in the future. A first step to attain a higher level would be to invoke 'the oath of the king'--which makes monarchy itself indispensible. But how will the king know? A common expedient is to choose what is most evidently present, even if this imputes knowledge to inanimate objects... Through an ingenious language game of personification, the most obvious object is provided with functions that are anything but obvious. The accepted language game goes further postulating ever higher-ranking witnesses, more reliable than those actually present, to represent inflexible truth. That is when gods enter the scene. It would not be correct to say that gods are just invented in this context. Rather, it is that all the gods and powers venerated by established tradition who guarentee hierarchical order, who are experienced in terror and held responsible for the well-being or illness of the individual, the family, tribe, or country, are used in the context of oath-taking and prove to be useful indeed. The guarantee of absolute truth is with god..." [170-172] CREATION of the SACRED "It must be recalled once more that eating is the main feature of Heracles festivals. In myth, correspondingly, it is Heracles, the great beef-eater, who provides the animals, who sets up the altars, who institutes sacrifice, who cooks the meat, and who finishes two oxen at one meal. Comedy has made him the glutton par excellence. The Heracles of classical poetry is different, a paradigm of tragic existence; the popular Heracles tradition is not the invention of poets, and was hardly modified by them. This is not to say that Heracles 'is' or 'was originally' a shaman; nor is it correct to say that 'his origins belong to the folktale,' and that at some later date he 'entered' into myth and cult. The name Heracles is no doubt far later than the story patterns; there was no individual to start with, but tales structured by practical and ritual experience: bearing the marks of shamanistic hunting ritual, these tales accumulated to create the character whom the Greeks called Heracles... The Indo-European nomads, it seems, have become possessors of animals themselves, they have no need to plead with some power of the Beyond again and again. The primordial helper now appears to be the hero who has definitely transferred the mastership of animals from the Beyond to man... For the anxieties of emerging individualism, the really important acheivement of Heracles was that he could overcome Old Age and Death; the animal stories turned into 'survivals,' an ornamental background. It seems that Eleusis took advantage of the Heracles tradition and his journey to Hades as early as the sixth century; and Heracles remained the great helper against the horror of death down to the sarophagi of the late empire. It has even been suggested that the last word of Jesus Christ according to the Gospel of St. John, tetelestai, is taken over from Heracles..." [96-97] Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual "In the iconography, god and animal are intimately associated: the bull appears with Zeus, the bull or horse with Poseidon, the ram or he-goat with Hermes, the stag or roe with Apollo and Artemis. The iconographical tradition, however, has a life of its own, especially as it needs to differentiate gods by means of attributes; the bull god and stag god can be traced to Asia Minor / Hittite tradition; the owl of Athena, the eagle of Zeus, and the peacock of Hera-Juno are little more than heraldic animals for the Greeks... Many of these figures represent in turn the favoured sacrificial victims of the god: bulls for Zeus and Poseidon, stags and goats for Artemis and Apollo, rams and he-goats for Hermes, and doves for Aphrodite. Animal sacrifice is the underlying reality. In sacrifice, the power and presence of the Stronger One, the god, are experienced... At the same time, the animal in Greek sacrifice seems to be associated in a particular way with man. Again and again, myth relates how an animal sacrifice takes the place of a human sacrifice or, conversely, how an animal sacrifice is transformed into a human sacrifice; one is mirrored in the other. A certain equivalence of animal and man is doubtless inherited from the hunter tradition and is also quite natural to the cattle breeder. To both belong eyes, face, eating, drinking, breathing, movement, and excitement in attack and flight. The slaughter then reveals the warm blood, flesh, skin, and bones and also the splanchna which have always had the same names in both animal and man -- heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, and gall-bladder, and finally the form and function of the genitals. That an animal is sacrificed in the place of a man may be expressly stated. At that separation of gods and men in the sacrifice, the dying animal belongs to this extent on the side of men, mortals. To the god it stands in a relation of polarity: through the death which it dies, it confirms e contrario the superior power of the wholly other, deathless, everlasting god." [65-66] Greek Religion "The much-vexed question, whether, in this interdependence, myth or ritual is primary, transcends philology, since both myth and ritual were established well before the invention of writing. Myths are more familiar to the classicist, but it is important to realize that ritual, in function and transmission, is not dependent on words. Even today children will get their decisive impressions of religion not so much from words and surely not from dogmatic teaching, but through the behavior of their elders: that special facial expression, that special tone of voice, that poise and gesture mark the sphere of the sacred; the seriousness and confidence displayed invite imitation, while at the same time relentless sanctions are added against any violation: thus religious ritual has been transmitted in the unbroken sequence of human society. By its prominence in social life, it not only provided stimulation for storytelling, but at the same time some kind of 'mental container' which accounts for the stability, the unchanging patterns of mythical tradition. Thus for understanding myth, ritual is not a negligible factor... If myth reflects ritual, it is impossible to draw inferences from the plot of the myth as to historical facts, or even to reduce myth to historical events... If ritual is not dependent on myth, it cannot be explained by beliefs or concepts -- which would be to substitute another myth for the original one. Ritual seems rather to be a necessary means of communication and solidarization in human communities, necessary for mutual understanding and cooperation, necessary to deal with the intrahuman problems of attraction and, above all, aggression. There are the never-dying tensions between young and old, and also between the sexes; they necessitate periodically some sort of 'cathartic' discharge; it may be possible to play off one conflict to minimize the other... it is ritual that avoids the catastrophe of society. In fact only the last decades have abolished nearly all comparable rites in our world; so it is left to our generation to experience the truth that men cannot stand the uninterrupted steadiness even of the most prosperous life, it is an open question whether the resulting convulsions will lead to katharsis (purification) or catastrophe." [75-78] SAVAGE ENERGIES "Ritual restitution includes expressing one's bad conscience and renewing renunciation, submission, and worship; prepatory ritual includes anticipatory renunciation and giving things away in the hope of success. The gestures -- kneeling, prostration, folding or raising hands, solem presentation, sighing, crying, and wailing -- are taken from behavior found in human interaction. Their particular function is in relation to one's fellow man, promoting unity and trust rather than aggressive tension. As ritual, as demonstrative communication, they are severed from any real object and instead oriented toward something imaginary. This conduct is consolidated and grows with the urge to imitate and with the pressures of tradition: people act collectively as though an invisible, quasi-human being were present whom they must worship. The experience of a transcendent power is mediated by the community... in worshipping this power the individual acquires a special freedom and independence from his fellow men, since the inescapable confrontations that result from selfish interests are replaced by a collective orientation. When language comes to name this imaginary object and attempts to describe it, there is at least a rudimentary conception of god, based on the experience shaped by the ritual... myths indeed give some indication that the god is identical with his sacrificial animal... | In the storm of history, it was always those societal organizations with religious foundations that were finally able to assert themselves: all that remained of the Roman Empire was the Roman Catholic Church. And there, too, the central act remained the incredible, one-time and voluntary sacrifice in which the will of the father became one with that of the son, a sacrifice repeated in the sacred meal, bringing salvation through admission of guilt. A permanent order thus arose--cultural progress that nonetheless preserved human violence. All attempts to create a new man have failed so far. Perhaps our future chances would be better if man could recognize that he still is what he once was long ago, that his existence is defined by the past." [76-77|82] HOMO NECANS "The slaughter of animals for sacrifice ceased in the West with the victory of Christianity... practically no feature of ancient religion is so alien to us as the thusia (burnt offering), which for the ancients was the sacred experience par excellence: hieron, hiereus, hiereion, hiereuein (sacrificial victim, priest, sacrificial offering, to sacrifice). Perhaps this is the reason why we find it so difficult to accept the explanation of the word tragoidia that seemed almost self-evident in antiquity... in the sacrificial feast the joy of the festival and the horror of death interpenetrate. The Greek sacrificial rites represent in vivid detail human aversion to killing and the feelings of guilt and remorse caused by the shedding of blood. Adorned for the festival, garlanded like the celebrants, sometimes with guilded horns, the animal was led along. Many legends tell how the victims have pressed forward voluntarily to the sacrifice. The beginning of the rite was emphatically harmless: a vessel containing water and the basket with the sacrificial barley, brought to the place by a virgin, were carried round the altar; a line is drawn that seperates the sacred from the profane. Then the participants wash their hands -- their first common action -- and the victim has its share, too: it is sprinkled with water... the animal was supposed to express its consent by bowing its head... participants take the barley out of the basket as if they were to prepare for a vegetarian meal; but beneath in the basket there is a knife, which is now uncovered... There is a prayer, a moment of silence and concentration; then all participants throw the oulai 'forward' at the victim and the alter... instead of the barley, leaves can be used and, in one instance, stones. Everyone takes part, is guilty and innocent at the same time... The goat-sacrifice to Dionysus is in fact another example of making the victim responsible for its own death: the goat, it is said, has gnawed the vine and must therefore die. In Corinth, at the festival of Hera Akraia, the she-goat was made to dig up for herself the knife with which she is slaughtered... Man, sacrificing according to the will of the god, still has to overcome or even outwit his reluctance to kill. Expressing his feelings of guilt and remorse, man shows his deeply rooted respect for life. Prevelanet, however, is a higher necessity, which commands him to kill..." [9-13] SAVAGE ENERGIES "Thanks to the descriptions in Homer and tragedy, we can reconstruct the course of an ordianary Greek sacrifice to the Olympian gods almost in its entirety. The path that leads to the center of the sacred experience is complex. The preparations include bathing and dressing in clean clothes, putting on ornaments and wreaths; often sexual abstinence is a requirement. At the start, a procession (pompe), even if still a small one, is formed. The festival participants depart from the everyday world, moving to a single rhythm and singing. The sacrificial animal is led along with them... Generally it is hoped that the animal will follow the procession compliantly or even willingly. Legends often tell of animals that offered themselves up for sacrifice, apparent evidence of a higher will that commands assent. The final goal is the sacrifical stone, the altar 'set up' long ago, which is to be sprinkled with blood. Usually a fire is already ablaze on top of it. Often a censer is used to impregnate the atmosphere with the scent of the extraordinary, and there is music, usually that of the flute. A virgin leads the way... after arriving at the sacred place, the participants mark off a cirle; the sacrificial basket and water jug are carried around the assembly, thus marking off the sacred realm from the profane. The first communal act is washing one's hands as the beginning of that which is to take place. The animal is is also sprinkled with water. 'Shake yourself,' says Trygaios ... for the animal's movement is taken to signify a 'willing nod,' a 'yes' to the sacrificial act. The bull is watered again, so that he will bow his head. The animal thus becomes the center of attention... Hidden beneath the grains in the basket was the knife, which now lies uncovered. The leader in this incipient drama, the ἱερεύς, steps toward the sacrificial animal, carrying the knife still covered so that the animal cannot see it... The 'act' is over; its consequences are the next concern. The animal is covered up and disembowelled. Its inner organs are now the main focus, lying revealed, an alien, bizarre, and uncanny sign, and yet common in the same form to men as well, as is known from seeing wounded soldiers. The tradition specifies what must be done with each piece... the heart, sometimes still beating, is put on the altar. A seer is present to interpret the lobes of the liver... the σπλάγχνα--the collective term for the organs -- are quickly roasted in the fire from the altar and eaten at once. Thus the inner circle of active participants is brought together in a communal meal, transforming horror into pleasure..." [3-6] HOMO NECANS "The god is present at his place of sacrifice, a place distinguished by the heap of ashes left from 'sacred' offerings burnt there over long periods of time... The realm of the gods is sacred, but the 'sacred' act done at the 'sacred' place by the 'consecrating' actor consists of slaughtering sacrificial animals. Sacrificial killing is the basic experience of the 'sacred.' Homo religiosus acts and attains self-awareness as homo necans... to act ... sacrifice ... the name merely covers up the heart of the action with a euphemism. The bliss of encountering divinity finds expression in words, and yet the strange and extraordinary events that the participant in the sacrifice is forced to witness are all the more intense because they are left undiscussed... | The sacrificer would bring the animal -- a goat or a sheep -- into the chapel, leading it three times around the sacrificial stone while children threw grass and flowers onto it. As the priest stood at the altar, the keeper of the animal would make a sign of the cross with his knife three times and then slaughter the animal while praying. The blood was supposed to sprinkle the stone. After this, outside the chapel, the animal would be carved up and the feast prepared. The priest, like his ancient counterpart, received the animal's thigh and skin, as well as its head and feet. Christianity is here no more than a transparent cover for the ancient form that underlies it: that is to say, for the sacred act of blood-sacrifice. Animal-sacrifice was an all- pervasive reality in the ancient world. The Greeks did not perceive much difference between the substance of their own customs and those of the Egyptians and Phoenicians, Babylonians and Persians, Etruscans and Romans, though ritual details varied greatly among the Greeks themselves..." [2-3|8-9] HOMO NECANS "All creatures must keep clean, eliminating matter which is a source of irritation and so is defined as dirt. For man, cleaning becomes one of the formative experiences of childhood. Cleanliness sets limits. The child learns how ready others are to banish a dirty person along with his dirt, and how, by following certain procedures, an acceptable status may be regained. Purification is a social process. To belong to a group is to conform to the standard of purity; the reprobate, the outsider, and the rebel are the unclean. Groups which set themselves apart from the rest of society may do so through an appeal to special, heightened purity. Accordingly, the emotionally charged activities of cleaning have become ritual demonstration. By celebrating the elimination of irritating matter, these rites delimit a more highly valued realm, either the community itself in relation to the chaotic outside, or an esoteric circle within society; they mediate access to this realm and so to a higher status; they play out the antithesis between a negative and a positive state and so are suited to eliminate a state which is truly uncomfortable and disruptive, and to lead over to a better, pure state. Purification rituals are therefore involved in all intercourse with the sacred and in all forms of initiation; but they are also employed in crisis situations of madness, illness, and guilt. Insofar as in this case the ritual is placed in the service of a clearly identifiable end, it assumes a magical character... The demand for purity draws attention to the boundary which seperates the sacred from the profane; the more scrupulously and intensively purfication is pursued, the greater the difference in order appears..." [75-77] GREEK RELIGION "Thus, Apollo's worshippers brought their sheep up from the fertile plain to the mountain to be slaughtered with the assistance of the priests with their knives... rather than a transcendental piety, the Delphic sheep-sacrifice exhibited all-too-human traits... Precisely this form of Delphic sacrifice is reflected in the heroic myth that reconstructs the action as a human tragedy... Thus, in sacrificing, he himself became the victim in this specifically Delphic ritual. The genealogies call the murder 'Machaireus,' 'the knife-man,' son of Daitas, 'the feaster'; and, far from making him a criminal, they give him priestly status... | It was simply a question of waiting until one of the animals turned to the altar and, following its instincts, ate the grain. The ox itself thus broke the tabu and sinned against the god and his alter. After this, the 'ox-slayer' would swing his axe, the bull would fall... Banishment had been the price for spilling blood since ancient times; the Greeks called it 'flight,' φυγή. Thus, the biological mechanism that makes agression change to flight was institutionalized as law. At the Buphonia, the one who performed the sacrificial 'act' would run away and not return. The remaining participants, happy to be rid of him, could now enjoy the fruits of his action... The meat was evidently roasted and eaten at once. In this way, all participants were irrevocably implicated in the sacrifice... All would work together according to their roles; all ate the meat except the one who killed... There followed an epilogue emphasizing the event's social relevance. A trial was held at the center of the polis, that is, at the state hearth in the prytaneum, for the crime of having killed at the altar... The 'ox-slayer,' who would otherwise have been the first to be blamed, had fled and could not be found. Allegedly, no one knew him... the axe was made to stand trial, but aquitted... the knife was cast into the sea... These two acts seem more complementary than contradictory. Both the axe and the knife play a part in the sacrifice: the knife alone cannot kill the bull, nor the axe skin it... The axe would presumably have been kept elsewhere, in the shrine, as a primordial symbol of consecrated violence. A plow, the primordial plow of its inventor, was said to be kept in just this way on the Acropolis. The stuffed ox-skin was spread out in front of it, and thus the sacrificial animal had 'risen from the dead.' Obstensibly, the pre-sacrificial situation was restored. But even if the famous meals in the prytaneum were essentially vegetarian, nobody could forget that he was no longer living in a Golden Age..." [118-119|138-141] HOMO NECANS |