The Rattles – “The Witch”
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Monthly Archives: May 2012
Sale at ARC I thought I’d pass along
If you love some of the 19th Neoclassical paintings I place into my posts, one of the painters I use a lot of is William Bouguereau.
The Art Renewal Centre has published a limited edition Biography and complete collection of Bouguereau’s works, now on sale for $299. Clearly, this is only available to people who have a lot more money to spend than I do, but I figured I’d post this here since I’ve gotten favourable comments on the art I post with this blog before.
The classic Hellenistai Forum is re-opened
http://forum.hellenistai.com/index.php
Dearest minions,
Due to the demands of the public being unable to find the new forum for almost a year now (I mean, it’s only linked at the top of the Hellenistai media blog, and on Of Thespiae…), I have re-opened this one, so now it’s no longer just an archive hub held readable for posterity. What finally made me give up and re-open the forum is that phpBB, the forum software, apparently has made some major upgrades RE: spam control. To assist these upgrades, I also just gave up and bit the bullet and so now all new sign-ups have to be approved BY ME. To assure me that new accounts are not Spam-bots, you can e-mail me with the username and e-mail you signed up to the forum with –this will help me a lot.
Also, just because I’m not perfect (no matter how much I joke about being so), first posts still have to be approved by either myself or one of the moderators. I do not forsee this changing any time in the near future, but maybe if I can ever afford to upgrade to vBulletin (google it –check out that price-tag; mmyep, not gonna happen any time soon), I might.
Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to re-arrange the forum a bit, and due to a manual upgrade of some of the software, things *might* go wonky for a day or so. Don’t bug me too much with forum bullshit, because I’m also preparing for the annual weekender I attend every year in Chicago, and considering the last several months I’ve had, I really need this weekender. If I was smart, I’d put off re-opening the forum until after the weekender, but since I’m a genius, I think I can handle it –so don’t let me down! :luv:
That’s all for now. I’m going to do some stuff now.
That’s it. Go forth and make with the forum hijinks!
Demetre and the Palace of Kadmos
When I C&P’d that section at the beginning of the first of my posts about Demetre, I was immediately reminded of my first post about Ares.
Kadmos and the Ismenian Dragon.
In that first segment, it seems that legend has it that Kadmos’ legendary palace became Thebes’ first temple to Demetre, which suggests that —assuming Thebans did, in fact, habitually syncretise Demetre with Erinys Telphousia— that while Kadmos’ task earned Ares’ wrath, it was still within the will of Demetre. This also solidifies my thoughts on Demetre as a Great Mother of Civilisation and sustainable urban planning. It also speaks to the kind of mother She truly is: While She certainly has Her loving and nurturing aspects (as should be obvious), She’s also pragmatic and realises that sometimes sacrifices must be made for the greater good, and sometimes what She has begotten is standing in the way of progress and must be eliminated.
While Her rural associations are impossible to escape, so too are Her urban aspects, as I noted before. Likewise, just as much as She values tradition, She also wills progress.
I’m now reminded of a bit from Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, suggesting that while every other deity in the Hellenic pantheon was borderline useless to Man, it was Dionysos and Demetre, agricultural deities, who stood alone in being beneficial. 
As problematic as Hamilton’s dismissal of other deities is, I can certainly see some similarities between the two, especially in Their domains of “opposing” values somehow united in harmony through Their guidance.
This comes back around to Kadmos, who (modern scholars argue) was initially a unique Boeotian cult hero, and later was syncritised with a Phoenician adventurer. From that story, the still-later symbolic mythology arose of Kadmos inventing the alphabet and introducing people to agriculture (further linking Kadmos and Demetre), and also becoming wedded to Harmonia, which is argued to symbolise the union of an “Eastern” love of learning with a “Western” love of beauty. How Kadmos’ mythology truly developed is lost to time, but the symbols clearly reiterate a union of apparent opposites, and also closely associate the hero with Demetre. Considering this, it therefore makes perfect sense that his palas was soon converted to a grand temple to Demetre.
Now, the archaeology only debatably confirms some of the folk beliefs about Kadmos, including the origin of the alphabet coinciding with the founding of Thebes. The Phoenecian alphabet wasn’t introduced to Hellas until after the estimated date for the Trojan War. While the modern Hellenic alphabet is clearly descended of Phoenecian script, a far older text, called “Linear B” amongst those who study these things, is on tablets that have been found in a disproportionate abundance in and around Thebes, and so this may coincide with Herodotus’ relaying of Kadmos’ founding of Thebes, and bringing his knowledge with him, as significantly pre-dating the Trojan War. 
Unfortunately, few symbols of Linear B, at best, resemble any form of the Hellenic alphabet known today, but clearly the Linear B writing system was widespread throughout Thebes.
Considering that this became widespread in Thebes from a most-direct origin of the palace of Kadmos, again, this seems to symbolically reiterate the associations of Demetre with Civilisation and urban development —no civilisation in Earth’s history, living or extinct, has ever developed cities without a system of writing. By this, we can infer that writing is also sacred to Demetre; oral tradition is too easily manipulated and can be problematic in its attempts to learn history. After all, the Cyrenaic school was on to something in pointing out that the only true source of potential knowledge we can have is experience, but they were also sceptical of this knowledge in that we cannot truly know the experiences of everything that led up to what we experience; thus oral history seems especially superficial. To gain a better understanding, if not true knowledge, of history, we can learn from the paper trails (and, in this modern era, other recordings) of what happened; this experience is, too, superficial, but has greater potential for understanding than oral traditions alone. Again, we see Demetre as a Goddess of balancing Tradition and Progress in a harmonious and sustainable whole.
I conclude that Kadmos was, thus, most likely a unique Theban hero later syncretised, and that this Theban hero, in all the feats attributed to him, was doing Demetre’s Work on Gaia’s face. Though the alphabet he introduced did not stand the tests of time, we cannot blame because a slightly younger script managed to flourish and Theban pride attributed it to him, anyway; the exacts become less important when the intention still manages to flourish.
Start Your Week Off Right: A Round-Up
Here, go read “The Pagan Umbrella: Lowest Common Denominator Religion”. Here’s a excerpt:
For anyone who took classes of any kind there was always the lowest common denominator. I am not going to be PC about this, some people are just average and that’s fine. There were those kids and the ones who messed up the bell-curve by doing simple things like studying, doing extra credit, reading outside of assigned school texts, and sometimes genuinely loving learning and exploration. These kids, ultimately, suffered as the LCD took up the most space, the most time, and most of the teacher’s attention.
I feel the pagan umbrella has pretty much become just this, with most of the community being nothing more than a giant classroom where the LCD make the rules, the most noise, and get the most attention. And it’s not just the fact that this umbrella trumpets the cause of “acceptable mediocrity”, it demands that everyone should do so for the sake of “community.”
Now smeg off, I’ve got back pain.
Old Forum is re-opened!
http://forum.hellenistai.com/index.php
I’m actually kind of impressed with how few people were able to find the New Forum, and so with the promise of phpBB upgrades that’ll make things run a little better, I’ve decided to re-open the Old Forum. By all means, have a blast with that thing.
Boiotian Theoi: Demetre & Persephone
CULT IN BOIOTIA (CENTRAL GREECE)
I) THEBES Chief City of Boiotia
“The sanctuary of Demeter Thesmophoros (Lawgiver) [in Thebes, Boiotia] is said to have been at one time the palace of [the mythical king] Kadmos and his descendants. The image of Demeter is visible down to the chest. Here have been dedicated bronze shields, said to be those of Lakedaimonian officers who fell at Leuktra.” – Pausanias, Guide to Greece 9.16.5-6
Aelian, Historical Miscellany 12. 57 (trans. Wilson) (Greek rhetorician C2nd to 3rd A.D.) :
“When Alexandros the son of Philippos led his forces against Thebes the gods sent them signs and portents presaging their imminent fate . . . In the city at the temple of Demeter a spider began to cover the face of the cult statue with its handiwork and weave its usual product.”
II) Near THEBES Chief City of Boiotia
“Advancing from here twenty-five stades [from the Neistan Gate of Thebes, Boiotia] you come to a grove of Demeter Kabeiraie (of the Kabeiroi) and Kore (the Maid). The initiated are permitted to enter it. The sanctuary of the Kabeiroi is some seven stades distant from this grove. I must ask the curious to forgive me if I keep silence as to who the Kabeiroi are, and what is the nature of the ritual performed in honor of them and of Meter (the Mother). But there is nothing to prevent my declaring to all what the Thebans say was the origin of the ritual. They say that once there was in this place a city, with inhabitants called Kabeiroi; and that Demeter came to know Prometheus, one of the Kabeiroi, and Aetnailis his son, and entrusted something to their keeping. What was entrusted to them, and what happened to it, seemed to me a sin to put into writing, but at any rate the rites are a gift of Demeter to the Kabeiroi.” – Pausanias, Guide to Greece 9.25.5-6
III) SKOLLOS Village in Boiotia
“The temple of Demeter and Kore [at Skollos, Boiotia] among the ruins is not finished, and only half-finished are the images of the goddesses.” – Pausanias, Guide to Greece 9.3.4
IV) ASKRA Village in Boiotia
“It is said that on reaching old age a vision came to him [the poet Pindaros of Askra in Boiotia] in a dream. As he slept Persephone stood by him and declared that she alone of the deities had note been honoured by Pindaros with a hymn, but that Pindaros would compose an ode to her also when he had come to her. Pindaros died at once, before ten days had passed since the dream. But there was in Thebes an old woman related by birth to Pindaros who had practised singing most of his odes. By her side in a dream stood Pindaros and sang a hymn to Persephone. Immediately on waking out of her sleep she wrote down all she had heard him singing in her dream. In this song, among the epithets he applies to Haides is ‘golden-reined’ – a clear reference to the rape of Persephone.” – Pausanias, Guide to Greece 9.23.3
V) PLATAIA Town in Boiotia
“There is also at Plataia [in Boiotia] a sanctuary of Demeter, surnamed Eleusinia (of Eleusis).” – Pausanias, Guide to Greece 9.4.3
“When Philip died, and the kingship of Makedonia devolved on Alexandros, the Thebans succeeded in destroying the [Makedonian] garrison. But as soon as they had done so, heaven warned them of the destruction that was coming on them, and the signs that occurred in the sanctuary of Demeter Thesmophoros (Lawgiver) were the opposite of those that occurred before the action at Leuktra.” – Pausanias, Guide to Greece 9.6.5
“By the stream Molois and the place called Argiopion [near Plataia in Boiotia] there is a shrine of Demeter Eleusinia.” – Herodotus, Histories 9.57
“At Plataia the [historical army of the] Persians routed by the Lakedaimonians, fled in disorder to their own camp and inside the wooden walls which they had made in the territory of Thebes. It is indeed a marvel that although the battle was right by the grove of Demeter, there was no sign that any Persian had been killed in the precinct or entered into it; most of them fell near the temple in unconsecrated ground. I think – if it is necessary to judge the ways of the gods – that the goddess herself denied them entry, since they had burnt her temple, the shrine at Eleusis.” – Herodotus, Histories 9.65
“They kept to the spurs of the mountain [Kithairon in Boiotia] and the hill country, by the road that led upward straight to the temple of Demeter.” – Herodotus, Histories 9.69
“There was the additional coincidence, that there were precincts of Demeter Eleusinia on both battlefields [of the historical Greek-Persian War]; for at Plataia the fight was near the temple of Demeter, as I have already said, and so it was to be at Mykale also [an Ionian promontory opposite the island of Samos].” – Herodotus, Histories 9.101
VI) POTNIAI Village in Boiotia
“Across the Asopos [in Boiotia], about ten stades distant from the city, are the ruins of Potniai, in which is a grove of Demeter and Kore (the Maid). The images at the river that flows past Potniai [text missing] they name the goddesses. At an appointed time they perform their accustomed ritual, one part of which is to let loose young pigs into what are called ‘the halls (megara).’ At the same time next year these pigs appear, they say, in Dodona. This story others can believe if they wish.” – Pausanias, Guide to Greece 9.8.1
VII) Near MYKALESSSOS Village in Boiotia
“On the way to the coast of Mykalessos is a sanctuary of Demeter Mykalessia. They say that each night it is shut up and opened again by Herakles, and that Herakles is one of what are called the Daktyloi Idaioi [or perhaps originally the hero]. Here is shown the following marvel. Before the feet of the image they place all the fruits of autumn, and these remain fresh throughout all the year.” – Pausanias, Guide to Greece 9.19.5
VIII) ANTHEDON Village in Boiotia
“About the center of Anthedon [in Boiotia] is a sanctuary of the Kabeiroi, with a grove around it, near which is a temple of Demeter and her daughter [Kore], with images of white marble.” – Pausanias, Guide to Greece 9.22.5
IX) KOPAI Village in Boiotia
“Here [in the town of Kopai by Lake Kopais, Boiotia] is a sanctuary of Demeter.” – Pausanias, Guide to Greece 9.24.2
X) LEBADEIA Village in Boiotia
“[In the grove of the oracular daimon Trophonios at Lebadeia, Boiotia] there is also a sanctuary of Demeter surnamed Europe, and a Zeus Huetios (Rain-god) in the open … He who descends [into the oracle of Trophonios] sacrifices to Trophonios himself and to the children of Trophonios, to Apollon also and … to Demeter whom they surname Europa and say was the nurse of Trophonios.” – Pausanias, Guide to Greece 9.39.4-5
“The grove of Trophonios [stands] by the river Herkyna. They say that here Herkyna, when playing with Kore (the Maid), the daughter of Demeter, held a goose which against her will she let loose. The bird flew into a hollow cave and hid under a stone; Kore entered and took the bird as it lay under the stone. The water flowed, they say, from the place where Kore took up the stone, and hence the river received the name of Herkyna (Lady of the Stone Enclosure). On the bank of the river there is a temple of Herkyna [of Kore Herkyna], in which is a maiden holding a goose in her arms.” – Pausanias, Guide to Greece 9.39.2-3
It’s not (or at least shouldn’t be)news to any-one that the cults of Demetre and Persephone are so tightly linked that the link on Theoi Project with the text “Cult > Boiotia” on the Persephone page actually re-directs to the page for Demetre. Reading over the quote excerpts and fragments above, I’m kind of ashamed to admit that I haven’t given much cultus to Them, and considering a bit of insight I got in a flash whilst writing up on Hekate, I’m rather surprised by this.
It seems clear to me in the excerpts on Her cult in Thebes, in particular, that She was regarded by the Boiotians as a Goddess of civilisation. While Boiotia has a reputation for being rural, at the same time, they had cities which were often remarked upon, travelled to from all over Hellas and elsewhere in the ancient Mediterranean, and —at the very least— became famous for their patrons of the arts and as hometowns to some of the ancient Hellenes’ greatest minds and celebrities. Clearly, the Boiotian understanding of Demetre was not one restricted to tilling the soil, but also to laying the foundation of civilisation.
It’s really poetic, if you think about it even a tiny bit. Anthropologists have long determined (and indeed, it seems one of a handful of things universally agreed-upon in the field) that the concept of cities didn’t even become a possibility until the development of agriculture gave people a reason to settle in an area. Essentially, Demetre is the Mother of urban development, though industrialisation is clearly in the domain of other deities. Without the gifts of Demetre, we’d all be wandering nomads, setting up camps for a time until we exhaust resources and move on until that area can replenish. With the gifts of Demetre, we can avoid that drudgery and (most importantly) that uncertainty by planning out what we need, where to best grow it, how best to rotate it, and generally live in a harmony with the land that not only genuinely benefits us and the Earth, but also can allow for those who would be “useless”, or at least all but, in a nomadic model to use the skills and gifts they do have in other ways to benefit the society —it’s like a “No Child Left Behind” model, except that it actually works because every-one is now, thanks to the Agri-Goddess Mother, free to learn what they do best and love most. To keep things running well, Demetre also takes on the Thesmia hat, creating laws to keep Her children in check.
For as much as I can complain about the state of society today, I don’t believe I’ve ever blamed the notion of society itself for what is wrong with Western society today. Society is a gift of Demetre, but what we do with it is our own. To blame the Mother of Society and Cities, even if you do so by merely ignoring those aspects of Her, it’s like sentencing Her to less than half of Her Glory —might as well sentence the mother of a serial killer to just as much time as the actual killer cos she told her child not to play with knives because they could hurt somebody, then a few years later, she handed her child a knife and told them to chop onions for dinner. I can’t take seriously one who claims to honour the same Demetre I do whilst longing for an end to society and harbouring a scathing loathe for cities. The average Pop-Wiccan-on-the-street who entertains anarcho-primitivist fantasies might try and tell me that their Maiden-Mother-Crone Goddess includes the same Demetre I honour, but I can’t believe that; I can’t see Demetre without seeing the building blocks of urban development and modern living, so no, I don’t believe that the Demetre I honour is the same as or even in cahoots with the Neo-Luddite Demetre.