RITUAL AND TRANSI TION STATES IN NON-HUMANS: HOW THE GODS ALSO UNDERGO RITES OF PASSAGE
PART ONE
The problem with the occult is
establishing a consensus of definition. Too often, ‘descriptions’ of the occult
are used to provide meaning of the phenomenon. Variances of narrative and/or
thematic characteristics are employed to explain not only what the occult is
but why it operates in the way it does. This is not surprising. Occult arts and
sciences have enormous reach and enter multiple avenues of discourse. The
occult is, in many ways, pluralism run rampant. The genre is anthropological
and folkloric; it is psychological and sociological. The occult is a favorite
of the arts and theatre. It is religious and scientific, conspiratorial,
quantum, and mystical.
But above
all else, the occult is experiential. It is something experienced. Just as one
cannot adequately explain ‘enlightenment’, ‘disappearance of the ego’,
‘satori’, or ‘absorption into god’, an occult event is a happening.
Something happens to both the occult and anybody who is witness to it. In many
ways, there is no definition of occult as it happens because there is nothing
to be conceptually defined at that moment. As Norman Melchert has remarked,
“the conceptual representation of the experience invariably comes afterward,
while one is no longer in the grip of it” (Melchert 445). Certainly more
Dionysian than Apollonian, this form of mystical experience is surreal and
difficult to comprehend.
Indeed, for
anybody who has witnessed a supernatural assault, there is a disorienting and
hallucinatory quality that really cannot be adequately explained. And each
occult event is unique. It is this inherent having no like or equal that
makes each occult happening incommensurable from any other so-called
occult event. We see this in a 1975 Ouija experience. According to the account:
On Tuesday evening, Mark and Kent
were on their way to MIA when they ran into Stephanie who wasn’t a member of
the church. So they went over to Stephanie’s house. They lit the candles on the
mantle piece and on the coffee table and began to play the Ouija board at about
7:00pm . They got the Ouija board to
work really well and then asked it a lot of questions such as ‘who would marry
whom’ and ‘does Suzie like Jimmy’ etc… Then they tried an experiment. Two of
them would close their eyes and place their fingers on the Ouija board. The
third person would place a ring on the board somewhere and the Ouija would
knock it off upon a command from one of the participants. After that Mark
wanted to ask the Ouija to show himself but Kent Kent Kent 9:30 pm when Kent Kent Kent 10:30pm . They realized that
they had all blacked out for about forty-five minutes. They put the Ouija board
in the garage and left. Kent Utah State
University
Such is the
atmosphere of many supernatural assault narratives. The experience of the
teenagers was indefinable as it occurred. The shock and horror of the moment
makes the entire episode unique to itself and completely incommensurable from
any other occult narrative. When the moment is gone, conceptual representation
can be applied and meaning ascribed but until then, the experience is
not unlike visionary trance. Each episode is an autonomous self-serving event.
And like visionary trance, logic is suspended in favor of discovery. Moreover,
while in that mental state, belief is also suspended. Being in the grip
of the experience leaves no room for doubt or belief because the event is
happening at that moment. Belief becomes self-evident.
In
actuality, the occult is an assemblage of representations that lack any clear
idea of what they are representative of. The occult is, at the same time,
horror stories, initiatory systems, and a symbolic system of correspondences.
It is realization of the numinous yet hidden. Occult comes from the Latin word occultus
and means secret or veiled. But perhaps in its capacity for creation, the
occult re-presents itself continuously. By its very nature, the occult renews
the numinous and makes affective experience paramount to its teachings. For an
occultist, the feeling of conjuring a non-human is equally as important as the
non-human itself.
What is
peculiar about occultists is that they resemble archaeologists and utilize a
context of discovery when they go about sifting through temporal and spatial
layers of meaning to uncover past ritualization. Their techniques and
instrumentation allow them to reveal or part the veil of the
past. As negotiators of time and space, they gather artifacts to form an
understanding of long-ago cultures. And as more data is revealed, the picture
of the past changes accordingly. The imagery archaeological study conjures
then, is essential because we are afforded a moment in time. By reconstructing Rome Rome
It wasn’t
always so. Before complex societies, representation of the occult was a
solitary experience. The ancient religion of Rome Rome
What was
once solitary then city-wide hearths became a pluriverse of pantheons. Gods
evolved distinct personalities and interacted among themselves. They developed
attitudes and schemed with and against mankind. And narratives were written to
biograph their exploits. Moreover, as migrants from places like Egypt Persia
As
population and religious complexity grew, the Imperial Regime suspended the
political obligations of ordinary citizens. At this time, the population didn’t
even vote. According to Robert Turcan, when the individual no longer played an
active part of the running of the city, religious, micro-societies, and mystery
sects assured the individual a kind of reintegration and existence.[4]
When exotic foreign gods coupled with the already robust Greco-Roman pantheon,
they facilitated a creation of initiatory-based mystery schools. It is these
same schools that have served as the prototype to hierarchal initiatory systems
since the 17th century.
“To elevate man above the human
sphere into the divine and assure his redemption by making him a god and so
conferring immortality upon him.” – Martin P. Nilsson, Greek Popular
Religion, “The Religion of Eleusis Colombia University New York
According
to myth, Persephone was picking flowers one day when the ground split upon and
a black chariot with invisible driver rose up and abducted her. Taken by Hades
into the underworld, the young maiden became she who brings destruction.
This re-embodiment of the goddess into something terrifying led to social
anxieties attached to the cult. In fact, the word Persephone instilled such a
terror that it was rarely used. According to Michael Cosmopoulos, prayers to
Persephone were either prayers to the dead or curses on the living. No parent
ever considered naming a daughter after her, and it should be no surprise to
discover that even the place she dwelt had no name of its own.[5]
Much like
ancient Egyptian narratives of Osiris and Isis, the Demeter-Persephone
relationship involve purification and the loss of a loved one. Demeter searches
for her daughter and as she does, all vegetation begins to die. During this
period, she took the alias Doso and worked as nursemaid to the two sons of King
Celeus. Demeter sought to make Demophon a god by giving him the divine breath,
anointing him in ambrosia, and burning his immortality away in the
family-hearth. One night, the boy’s mother walked in while her son was in the
fire and became horrified.
Narratives
of Isis also involve purification through the use of
fire. In Egyptian myth, Isis discovered that Osiris was
trapped in a wooden pillar at the royal palace
of Byblos Isis admonished the queen for
robbing her son of immortality.
Although
these events are perhaps secondary to the main action of the mythos, they still
resonate in occult importance. The use of fire is essential in astrological understanding.
Often times, fire denotes the creative spirit. Alchemy and Tarot also make use
of fire as an agent of transformation. And this is key. Throwing the princes in
the hearth-fire was a way to awaken their potentialities for enlightenment or
absorption into God. It was an initiation and their becoming.
The success
of the mystery ritual occurs when mother and daughter are reunited in the
confines of the Telesterion. One of the primary centres of the
Eleusinian mysteries, this building is where the dramatization of Persephone’s
return was revealed to initiates. The mystae were blindfolded and made
to wander through the dark. Reliving Persephone’s terror in the underworld,
these initiates had the subjective experience of being the goddess. They knew what
it felt like to be in Hades domain. According to Cosmopoulos, the Epoptai
(more advanced initiates) who are waiting outside the Telesterion could see
Persephone, together with her mother, emerging from the cave precinct where she
arose from the underworld. The light that came from within the Telesterion
came, I imagine, from the torches that were suddenly lit by the hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of these Epoptai standing at the steps that line the walls
of the Telesterion. It was at this moment that the mystae entered and beheld
the image of the reunited goddesses.[6]
Now,
compare the Eleusinian mystery with its Egyptian counterpart. Initiates first
went through a purification ceremony which readied them for their ultimate
becoming. When nighttime came, the initiate was dressed in a linen robe never
previously worn. Then the priest took him by the hand and lead him to the
remotest part of the sanctuary or penetralia. The neophyte was probably
shown statues that were concealed from the gaze of ordinary followers. The
ritual then enacts the symbolic death that corresponded with Osiris. By dying
to his former life, the man was reborn as a god. According to Turcan,
this moment occurred in the middle of the sanctuary, a platform was set up
which the new initiate mounted, this time clad in an embroidered linen
robe…when the curtains were drawn, he was revealed like a statue,
crowned with palm-leaves and armed with a torch, for the admiration of the
faithful, who filed slowly past his feet. [7]
Just like the Eleusinian narrative, the initiate undergoes a change of
consciousness. In ritually becoming the deity, each candidate undergoes a rite
of passage. They now understand what it feels like to be the deity.
Such a
statement would be meaningless if the deity didn’t also undergo a rite of
passage. This is what occultists seek to understand. What are the mechanisms
that lead to liminal or transition states in a non-human?
[1] Fustel De Coulange, The
Ancient City Greece Rome
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[5] Michael B. Cosmopoulos, Greek
Mysteries: The Archaeology and Ritual of Ancient Greek Secret Cults. Routledge
Publishing. 2003.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Turcan 1996.
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