Cosmic cycles and time regeneration: immolation rites of the 'King of the Old Year'

di Marco Maculotti

Mircea Eliade wrote that "the main difference between the man of archaic and traditional societies and the man of modern societies, strongly marked by Judeo-Christianity, consists in the fact that the former feels solidarity with the cosmos and cosmic rhythms, while the second is considered in solidarity only with history "[Eliade (1), p.5]. This "cosmic life" is connected to the microcosm by a "structural correspondence of planes arranged in hierarchical order" which "together constitute the universal harmonic law in which man is integrated" [Sanjakdar, p.155].

Archaic man especially took into consideration the solstices and equinoxes, as well as the dates between them: it was believed that in these particular days, which marked the passage from one phase of the cycle to the next of the "wheel of the year", the energy of the cosmos flowed more freely, and therefore they chose such dates to perform their own rituals. Here we are especially interested in certain dates between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, that is to say the calendar phase in which the Sun appears die: the so-called "solstice crisis" or "winter crisis".

Traditional man believed that when the "wheel of the year" had reached its winter phase, it would have to be done relive the heliacal star with special rituals, in order to ensure fertility and fecundity for the year to come. It can also be said that, in every part of the world, traditional societies knew and applied ritual methods to obtain the regeneration of time [Eliade (1), p.104]. For example, the thinkers of ancient India, from the Vedic period onwards, in an attempt to give structure to the shapeless chaos of the universe, forged with their intuitions a very dense web of mythical and ritual connections and correspondences, mainly centered on the sacrifice, exoterically represented with the death of a human and, later, animal victim, as a symbol of the death of the old year and its consequent renewal and rebirth as a "new year".

Prajàpati is the year. *
The year is death. He who knows this is not touched by death.** 

* Aitareya Br., 7,7,2
**  Qat. Brahmin, 10,4,3,1

The immolation of the "King of the Waning Year"

We know that in ancient times the year for the Hindus — as well as for the Celts, Romans and other Indo-European peoples — began on the vernal equinox, "when fawns are born." Then the king of the old year, adorned with cervine horns like Actaeon, was put to death by angry women, called "queens" [Graves, p.105]. The king, in these ancient rituals, was, as Hooke revealed, the center of the cult, and as such was responsible for the harvests and prosperity of the communities [Eliade (2), p.44]. From an archaic point of view that saw in the king the son and vicar of the divinity on earth, he was considered responsible for the regularity of the rhythms of nature and the good progress of the whole society: it is therefore not surprising to note that, through his sacrifice, he believed that time was regenerated and fertility assured for the year to come [Eliade (1), p.78].

In particular, the killing of the king was necessary, among various ancient populations, among which Evola counts the Nordic stocks "up to the time of the Goths" [Evola, p.29], when a calamity or a famine: the sovereign was then sacrificed because it was believed that his "mystical strength of fortune" had failed and, for this reason, in order to born again the community following the calamity, it was necessary to sacrifice the king who had failed in his task to appoint a new one [Ibidem]. The community ritually infused all negative influences into the person of the old king (the "King of the Old Year"), a scapegoat of Girardian memory, whose elimination was considered an act of purification and renewal of the world. The archaic saga of the "King of the Woods of Nemi" (Rex Nemorensis), whose royalty passed to the one who would have known how to surprise and kill him [Evola, p.30], well studied by Frazer in his most famous work, The golden branch.

Even in the rest of Europe there are extremely suggestive traditions that seem to confirm the validity of the hypotheses: during the "Dance of the Horns" by Abbots Bromley (Staffordshire), the ritual phase of the celebrations dedicated to the Celtic god Lugh [cf. "The festival of Lughnasadh / Lammas and the Celtic god Lugh"], God of sunlight," the dancers, who wear two appendages on their heads corniforms, surround a ghostly creature dressed in buckskin and bearing a deer skull on its head with a huge antler stage ". The dance mimics the killing of the central character, personification of the burgeoning power and the sun weakened over the course of the year [Centini, p.201], or rather Lugh himself. In this way, the god would have regained strength by regenerating himself in another representative of him; just as the cervid loses its horns every autumn and develops new ones — hence the significance of the deer as a symbol of the dying and reborn Sun (and Year).

Traces of similar ceremonies are also found in 440th-century Ireland, another region that boasts a traditional Celtic substratum. Graves reports a story about a ritual of this type, in Tyrconnell, during which the “coronation of an Irish king” was carried out and which in the preliminary rites contemplated the sacrifice and quartering of a white mare. After being killed and quartered, the animal was put to boil in a cauldron: the king entered the container, sipped the broth and ate the meat. In this rite, the white mare was seen as the incarnation of the Solar Year, and therefore was sacrificed as a representative of the King of the Waning Year, to allow the rise of the new ruler, representing the King of the Increasing Year. Similar ceremonies are also documented among the Britons of the Bronze Age, in Gaul and in medieval Denmark [Graves, pp. 1-XNUMX].

"Solstitial Crisis" and subversion of the Cosmos

The explanation of certain rituals is obtained by considering that, borrowing Curletto's words, “in critical situations, which always express a transgression, therefore an emblematic reversal, symbolically subverting the terms of the relations helps to resolve the crisis itself. When order fails and equilibrium is broken, a new rupture is necessary, a new event out of the ordinary… so that we can be reintroduced into equilibrium ”[Curletto, pp.86-7]. In other words, the opposition of two transgressions cancels them.

For this reason, in the Roman Saturnalia (Saturn corresponds to Kronos / Cernunno) there was an inversion of customs and the subversion of roles: profane time was suspended and the paradoxical coexistence of the past (the return of the souls of the dead) with the present, in a situation of undifferentiated chaos. The last days of the past year, during which the Saturnalia took place, were in fact identified with the chaos preceding creation. The close relationship with the agrarian dimension of these rituals (it should always be borne in mind that in this period of the year we are in the midst of the "solstice crisis") should make it clear that, as Eliade affirms, "both on the plant level and on the human, we are faced with a return to primordial unity, the establishment of a "nocturnal" regime in which limits, profiles, distances become indiscernible "[Eliade (2), p.94]: the dissolution of form conveyed externally by orgiastic chaos and the suspension of the law. Every license was allowed, laws and prohibitions are suspended, and "while awaiting a new creation, the community lives close to the divinity, or more exactly lives when it comes to total primordial divinity [Ibidem, p.95].

Regarding the orgy, it is supposed that it circulates vital energy because it takes place precisely in moments of "cosmic crisis" (eg during drought) or opulence (during some archaic vegetation festivals), as if, in the eliadian thought, it was practiced during the crepuscular periods of the history of the world. These moments, as Sanjakdar notes, "see not only a decrease in vital energies which therefore need to be regenerated, but also a" contraction "of the same duration of life, and all this therefore determines a unique situation of degeneration of all planes. existential "[Sanjakdar, p.172]. Magnone, in a personal letter to the author, also reports the common opinion that "Tantrism, although a late phenomenon, represents the re-emergence of concepts linked to ancient fertility cults", also underlining that "even in Tantrism the value of the orgy is reinterpreted as an instrument of reintegration of the original unity between Śiva and Śakti [Ibidem, p.182].

This vision of the cosmos in Rome permeated, in addition to the Saturnalia, also other rites: in February there was the ritual expulsion of Mamurius Veturius, the "horned god of the year", "double" of Mars and demon of vegetation, who finally, through the his masked representative underwent the immolation rite [Dumézil, p.196]. In the oldest Roman calendar, the year began in March: therefore, February was originally the last month of the year. This fact allows us to frame without fear of denial the ritual expulsion of Mamurio Veturio within this complex of end-of-year rites, all contemplating the return to an undifferentiated and orgiastic chaos and the killing of a sacrificial victim as a representative of '"Old Year". Thus Eliade: "Since, in the old Roman calendar, February was the last month of the year, it participated in the fluid, 'chaotic' condition that characterizes the intervals between two time cycles: the rules were suspended and the dead could return to earth ; also in February the ritual of the Lupercalia took place, collective purifications that prepared the universal renewal symbolized by the "New Year" (= ritual recreation of the world) "[Eliade (3), p.121].

The ancient wild party of Saturnalia has moved into today's Carnival (*krn), so much so that in the character of the same name we can recognize "a continuer of the King of Saturnalia" [Toschi, p.32]: "Like this one, who, assuming the role of the God Saturn and the" King of Spree ", was finally sacrificed, so the Carnival character, after having taken part in all the manifestations of joy and revelry, was tried, condemned and burned ".

Frazer and the Rex Nemorensis

The first to demonstrate the existence since archaic times of cults directed to the so-called "Spirits of the Grain", gods of the budding power of vegetation was Mannhardt; these spirits of the vegetation had the ability to control rain and good weather, the prosperity of the harvest, the abundance of herds and the fertility of women. James Frazer, for his part, distinguished himself for having been able to take up Mannhardt's intuitions and develop a vast morphology of the CDs. "Dying and reborn gods of vegetation" [Eliade, The nostalgia of the origins, p.27].

Among the beliefs and rites he analyzed ne The Golden Branch, one became particularly well known: that of the so-called King of Nemi (Rex Nemorensis), priest-king of Diana Aricina, who resided in the sacred wood dedicated to the goddess near Lake Nemi, south of Rome. The historiographical material in this regard reports the tradition according to which this priest held an unusual position: he was an escaped slave, who had obtained that honor by killing his predecessor in a ritual duel and could remain in his place only as long as he had successfully defended his rank against all new challengers. Frazer theorized that the King of Nemi, which he also calls "King of the Wood", represented the particular incarnation of the budding principle of nature, a time of universal veneration. The union of the priest with the goddess Diana would represent him Hieros Gameos between the selene-telluric goddess and the generative energy of the god. writes Fabiana Dimpflmeier in the essay In the sacred grove. Reality, fiction, magic and nature in The Golden Bough by James G. Frazer (paragraph 37):

“Following Frazer's reasoning, the king of the woods he therefore embodied a spirit of vegetation, Virbio, who ritually married Diana - patroness not only of wild animals, lady of woods and hills, of solitary glades and rivers, but also, "as the personification of the moon, especially, it seems, of the yellow moon of August ”, dispenser of divine fruits and sweet ear for the prayers of pregnant women. Theogamy served to propitiate the fertility of nature and was perpetuated regularly every year inside the sacred grove ".

Just as the sacred union also the sacrifice of her husband is linked to the same beliefs. For this, the King of Nemi is destined to be sacrificed by means of the hand of his successor when his vir magic now appears on the verge of dying out. In doing so, through the ritual killing of the representative of the old year (or winter), the world it was rising to new life and the fertility of the fields was assured for the year to come. In other words, it would be the umpteenth ritual clash between two Kings, of the Old Year and the New Year, which results in a loss of vital energy in the one destined to leave the throne, and in a consequent resurrection of that energy in the person of the new King.

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