Tag: Nietzsche
"Ancient hypocrisy" and "modern hypocrisy": the mask and the "daimon"
Nine glosses (and an appendix) on the intimate meaning of “hypocrisy”, on the mask as a form of sacred discipline, on the personification of Yeats's “daimon” or anti-self; and again on the Rite, on the “Fall”, and on Love.
Cernunno, Odin, Dionysus and other deities of the 'Winter Sun'
It would seem, indeed, that all these numinous powers, as well as a certain chthonic-telluric and chaotic-wild aspect of nature, are also symbolically connected to the Winter Sun, or rather to the "Dying Sun" in the coinciding final days of the Year. with the "solstitial crisis", during which the heliacal star reaches its annual nadir.
di Marco Maculotti
cover: Hermann Hendrich, "Wotan", 1913
[follows from: Cosmic cycles and time regeneration: immolation rites of the 'King of the Old Year'].
In the previous publication we had the opportunity to analyze the ritual complex, recognizable everywhere among the ancient Indo-European populations, centered on theimmolation (real or symbolic) of the "King of the Old Year" (eg. Roman Saturnalia), as a symbolic representation of the "Dying Year" that must be sacrificed to ensure that the Cosmos (= the order of things), reinvigorated by this ceremonial action, grants the regeneration of Time and of the 'World' (in the Pythagorean meaning of Kosmos like interconnected unit) in the new year to come; year which, in this sense, becomes a micro-representation of the Aeon and, therefore, of the entire cyclical nature of the Cosmos. Let's now proceed toanalysis of some divinities intimately connected with the "solstitial crisis", to the point of rising to mythical representatives of the "Winter Sun" and, in full, of the "King of the Waning Year": Cernunno, the 'horned god' par excellence, as far as the Celtic area is concerned; Odin and the 'wild hunt' for the Scandinavian one and Dionysus for the Mediterranean area.
The doctrine of the Eternal Return of the same: from Berosus to Eliade
di Marco Maculotti
Like the same Nietzsche had to recognize in Ecce Homo, the doctrine of the Eternal Return of the same was inspired by the reading of some philosophers of the Stoic current, in particular Zeno of Citium and Cleante of Ace. However, it is probably up to the Chaldean Berosus the first enunciation reached us in the Western context of the doctrine of the "Great Year" and the Eternal Return: the universe is considered as eternal, but it is annihilated and reconstituted periodically every "Great Year" (the corresponding number of millennia varies from one school to another); when the seven planets come together in the sign of Cancer ("Winterfell", the winter solstice of the "Great Year") a deluge will occur; when they meet in the sign of Capricorn ("Great Summer", summer solstice of the "Great Year") the whole universe will be consumed by fire [Eliade 116-7].
