Persephone And The Springtime Was Written By Margaret Hodges With Illustrations By Arvis Stewart.

Vivienne Westwood: Orb Key Lighter (2009)

"'Will Not Let Die': Debilitation and Inhuman Biopolitics in Palestine" in The Right to Maim, Jasbir Puar

Indian Gateways🪷~

Statuette of alabaster standing nude goddess, from Babylon, circa first century B.C.-first century A.D. (with movable arms, and ruby eyes and navel).CreditVincent Tullo for The New York Times

linocut relief print by molly white

“The so-called ‘mystery cults’ were a handful of marginal Eastern Mediterranean cults which achieved popularity throughout the Roman empire and were distinguished as a unique religious phenomenon by the Belgian archaeologist and philologist Franz Cumont in his 1906 book Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism. This modern label of ‘mystery cults’ has now long been used as a blanket designation to cover the cults held in honour of Mithra, Attis and Cybele, Isis and Osiris, Demeter and Persephone, Orpheus and Bacchus/ Dionysus, and the Samothracian Kabeiroi, among countless other minor and local groups who will never be remembered. Each of these cults (with perhaps the exception of Mithraism) revolved around the dramatic and ecstatic veneration of “dying-and-rising-gods,” a title formulated by the founding father of comparative religion, James G. Frazer, and subsequently developed by British and Scandinavian members of the Myth-and-Ritual School. These so-called “Cambridge Ritualists,” held to the notion that myths do not stand on their own, but are born out of ritual. This theory, of course, is heavily disputed; but the alternative view is equally enlightening: that myth and ritual evolve along parallel lines, without one developing strictly out from the other. The ‘Divine Bridegroom’ is similarly a name I use for these dying mystery gods. For the most part, the mystery religions were sanctuary based, taking place in a telestrion (initiation chambers), caves, or mountain groves, and their members were organized by a structure of hierarchical degrees of initiation. The “mysteries” themselves generally entailed dramatic experiences conveyed via esoteric initiation ceremonies that were reflections of annual agricultural and astrological cycles. Already the mainstream view of old-school ethnologists believed in the notion that the mysteries were survivals of ancient “rites of passage,” especially by Mircea Eliade and Angelo Brelich. Many believed that the origin of the mysteries should be sought in some stage of primitive agricultural development, and it is in illo tempore - into that mythic dream time - to which I wish to return throughout this book.”

— Dan Attrell -  Shamanism and the Mysteries: A Brief History of the Cult of Ecstasy

Image ID: An excepert, cut into two screenshots, from "The Archaeology of Caves in Ireland", by Marion Dowd, that reads:

DISAPPEARING UNDERGROUND

The idea that some ritual activities at caves involved people disappearing from view into darkness is powerful. In most cases only one individual or a small se- lect group could have entered caves at any one time. Thus the potentially public nature of early stages of some rituals, such as the entire community walking to a cave entrance, may have been juxtaposed by the secret activities that took place inside the cave involving just a few people. Witnessing this disappearance into darkness, and waiting for individuals to re-emerge, is likely to have been dramatic. The length of time spent inside a cave may have increased the feelings of anticipation, expectancy, anxiety, trepidation, fear or mystery experienced by those outside. People above ground were in the dark too. What was happening down there in the darkness? Who or what would be met in the cave? Why was the trip taking so long? Would s/he return? What would be the outcome?

These were religious and spiritual excursions into darkness that must have transformed those waiting outside but especially the person who had entered the cave. Such journeys may have conferred her/him with greater power, status, reverence or respect if caves were perceived as places of the Otherworld where it was possible to commune with the spirit world. Emerging from darkness and returning to the world of the living may have been seen as akin to a rebirth: emerging with new knowledge or insights, emerging as a new and transformed person.

/End ID

Common Tree Boa - yellow Morph.  

PHOTO : Pete Oxford.

kadamba style architecture