Sanatana Dharma - Aka Hinduism (3rd Bin)

[Husky]

Post 5/



Related to the above.



The following (RSmith, Julian's Gods again) is pasted here for the reference to the "names of the Gods" and their sanctity to Hellenes. It's also about the importance of authentic heathen rituals (to their heathens) in forming unbreakable bonds with their Gods. Alludes once more to how It Works. Note it's about Hellenes, so Hindus will find it more acceptable - since saying anything Hindu is generally not allowed (perhaps as it provides no *external* point of reference).

The rest of the text below - being context - is for RSmith's able defence of the various things mentioned as pre-existing in mainstream Hellenismos.

To understand the ritual use of symbols in the Oracles, we need

to recognize their debt to the principle of 'sympathies'. 'The Paternal

Intellect', one fragment runs, 'has sown symbola throughout the

kosmos.'60 ( <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' /> Read "The Paternal Intellect" alongside how Latin Magna Mater=Great Mother Goddess and hence Materia=Matter are related. Now read the line again as a Hindoo.)

According to this conception, there were 'sympathetic'

representatives of the divine in the material world which served as

symbola of the divine causes of animals, plants and minerals. By

discovering and manipulating the appropriate symbola, one could

establish contact with the gods. The fact that Hecate is the speaker

in many of the extant fragments of the Oracles clearly suggests that

she was the deity most often involved by theurgists in this connection.

To judge by a late testimony,61 the symbola manipulated by

theurgists took various forms. They might be secret symbols or

messages written on gems or stones used in the ritual; they might be

magical sounds, the secret names of gods; so too, they might be

statues of gods. Comparable texts in the Hermetica and the Magical

Papyri speak of statues 'filled with spirit' and of the manufacture of

images containing symbola intended to draw spirits into them.62 As

far as the scanty evidence permits us to judge, Julian's own theurgic

initiation seems to have involved the invocation of Hecate by this

means: our clearest testimony bearing on the detail of the rituals

practised by Maximus of Ephesus concerns his animation of a statue

of the goddess by theurgic means.63



From the manner in which we learn of these activities of Maximus,

it is clear that they were looked upon as somewhat eccentric even by

some lamblichan contemporaries.64 But it is as well to reiterate here

that we should be wary of making too much play with the peculiarity

of theurgy in this matter. The theurgic animation of statues can be

seen from one perspective as a development of a broader strand in

pagan thinking and practice. It rested, first, on the general assumption

that divinities were prone to manifest themselves in one way or

another before their worshippers - an assumption with firm Homeric

roots and a long and very lively subsequent history.65 More specifically,

the supposition that the power of a god could be contained

within a cult statue and turned to effective use finds clear parallels

outside theurgic circles. Second and third century oracular inscriptions

found at Syedra and Iconium, for instance, both of which seem

to have emanated from Apollo's oracle at Claros, record the manufacture

and setting up of statues of Ares whose function was clearly

apotropaic: in the case of the Syedran statue, the god was constrained

in a most emphatic fashion, being bound in chains.66 And evidence

of similar habits of mind persisting in the fourth century and later in

mainstream paganism is not lacking. In the early 420s, silver statues

of three figures, dressed in barbarian garb and buried under the

ground, came to light in Thrace. The governor of the region was

evidently quick to assume that the statues had been put there to ward

off barbarian invasion; following the discovery, he sent to the

Emperor to ask whether they should be removed or left in place.67

In the upshot they were removed - giving the pagan historian

Olympiodorus occasion to observe pointedly that shortly afterwards

a trio of barbarian peoples was to burst through the Roman frontier.



The notion that divinities were also invoked into the bodies of

participants at theurgic rituals is not hinted at in any of the securely

attested fragments of the Oracles, but it is not unlikely in itself: the

trance-technique was certainly employed in some broadly comparable

magical circles. A spell in the Magical Papyri offers a recipe

designed to summon a god into the body of a child, and Porphyry

dearly knew of 'theological' oracles - the products of seances rather

than temples, it may be supposed - in which gods spoke through the

body of a man.68 Proclus, at least, believed that the earlier theurgists

had practised this technique,69 and there is a strong hint in Eunapius

that lamblichus himself did something similar: he is said on one

occasion to have compelled a spirit to admit that it was not, as it

claimed, Apollo, but merely the soul of a dead gladiator,70 which

seems to imply a ritual designed to allow for the interrogation of a

god through a human medium.



If it is right to attribute the techniques I have outlined to the early

theurgists, their discipline must be assumed to have differed from

sorcery in the common run in virtue of its aim rather than its

methods. One modern definition speaks of it as 'magic applied to a

religious purpose and resting on a supposed revelation of a religious

character''71 'Magic' itself is a difficult term (oh yeah, no kidding), but this formulation

certainly fits well with lamblichus' talk of the aim of the theurgists

as being to bring about 'an ascent to the noetic fire'.72 By invoking

Hecate, the theurgist was put into contact with the channel by which

the soul had descended and could hope to reascend.

The Neoplatonists, Julian included, talk of this process as an

'elevation' (anagoge). Whether this was the term used in the Oracles

themselves is not clear; nor do the fragments yield much about the

structure of the ritual. There seems to have been a purification

intended to strengthen the 'subtle vehicle of the soul'; this will refer

to the garment which the soul had been clothed in as it descended

from the noetic world, and was doubtless intended to ensure the

soul's resistance to the 'perishable envelope of bitter matter' which

had come to cling to it in the sublunar world.73 Thereafter, the soul

was apparently conceived of as ascending in stages, drawn up by the

sympathetic power of rays of light emanating from the noetic entities

and through the visible Sun. 'Enquire', one fragment reads,

after the ray of the soul, from which she descended in a certain

order to minister to the body, and how you shall lead her up

again to her ordered place, having combined the [ritual] act

with the sacred word.74

That done, the soul will 'speed to the centre of the sounding light'

(the Sun), mingling with solar rays.75 There, finally, 'the soul of

mortals will press god to itself, having nothing mortal left in it,

utterly intoxicated with god'; and thereafter, it seems, 'the theurgists

do not fall into the common herd of men subject to Fate'.76

The ritual salvation of which these fragments speak can be assumed

to have constituted the ultimate aim of theurgy, and the likelihood

is that a ritual enactment of the 'elevation' I have outlined formed

the core of the theurgic initiation that Julian underwent at Ephesus:

Julian himself, at least, speaks of 'an ineffable mystagogia in which

the Chaldaean ecstatically celebrated the seven-rayed god through

whom he raised up the souls [of men]'.77



[...]



If too much has been made to hang on Julian's theurgy in some

accounts of his religious politics, that is perhaps because the mere

fact of it cannot but compel attention; it is the most strikingly fourth century

feature in the devotional and intellectual make-up of the

man. Who could conceive of his imperial exemplar Marcus chanting

secret names of gods and daimones in a subterranean chamber in the

expectation that the statue of Hecate before which he stood would

smile, then laugh, then draw his soul from the body and send it on

an astral journey ?126 All the more important, then, to keep the matter

in perspective. If the theurgists ascribed power to ritual magic and

acted on that belief, very many pagans who knew nothing of the

verses of 'Julianus the Chaldaean' and his son had long since done

the same. Nor did one need to study theurgic texts to believe that

the gods could teach theology through their oracles: a century and

more before Julian, we have seen, Apollo's prophets at a major centre

of his cult were giving responses in just that spirit.

(Something quite like what the Hindoos might refer to in their own languages as "Tantra" sprinkled here and there in the above excerpt too.)



1. The final bit in bold: ritual practices worked for the Hellenes no less (they knew it worked).



2. "Divinities were prone to manifest themselves in one way or another before their worshippers - an assumption with firm Homeric roots and a long and very lively subsequent history" <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />

Heathen Hellas and Rome still saw their Gods tooooooo. One always suspected it - it's there only partially-hidden in Julian's writings - but confirmation of a definite suspicion is a good thing.



3. On the blue bit: you know something similar. It's very obvious. Read it as your Hindoo self. ...And? So you conclude:

"OMGs. Julian was doing Hindooism!" (Close.)

"OMGs. Julian was doing Daoism!" (Again, close.)

"OMGs. Julian was doing Hellenismos!" Bingo.



Not the same religion, but close, nah?



(I can now already see Alien terrorists descending to declare that Kundalini Yoga - and the associated views of the Gods/cosmos - is "actually" derived in India from Hellenismos, and therefore no longer from Taoism. Taoism will then be made collateral damage again.

Surprising that Elst didn't know to declare Hellenismos - as at earlier than the 4th century - as Da Source.

Oh no. Wait wait. The silly ur-Shramanism peddlers will declare their invented ur-religion - if not Buddhism - took Kundalini Yoga to Hellenistic space. Don't put it beyond them.)





Anyway, none of points 1-3 above are surprising.

Rather, what I really like is that Julian's theurgic heathenism is repeatedly defended by RSmith as having pre-existed in some manner - as having precedent - in the state of Hellenismos as it existed before.







But note Julian's total heathenism <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />

Repeat (and this is from vague memory of my reading the following): Even during the night of the scuffle which crowned him emperor, as his own words recollected: he was at that time, which was deep in the night, busy worshipping his Father Jupiter - as opposed to napping. :lief:

(His bedroom was also separate from that of his appointed christist wife Helena, by the way. A fact which I think was alluded to in passing in the same set of statements.)



Yay, some proof that I didn't make it up. Julian's own words it is:

The legions approached. I, as usual, went out to the city to meet them, and urged them to pursue their march. They halted one day, till when I was a stranger to what they had been concerting. Jupiter, the Sun, Mars, Minerva, and all the Gods know, that I had not the least suspicion of their intentions till the evening of that day, when at sunset they were disclosed to me. [At midnight] on a sudden, the palace was invested and a universal shout was raised, while in the meantime I was deliberating with measures to pursue but without forming any determination. Though my wife was then living, I happened to sleep alone in an adjoining upper chamber from which, there being an opening in the wall, I paid my adoration to Jupiter. The clamour increasing and a general tumult prevailing throughout the palace, I intreated that God to give me a sign. This he immediately shewed me, commanding me firmly to confide in it and not oppose the resolution of the army. Though I had received these omens, I did not however yield without reluctance but resisted as much as possible, nor would I admit on the salutation or the diadem. But not being able singly to oppose so many and the Gods, whose will it was, strongly animating them and at the same time, composing my spirits, at length in the third hour some soldier, I know not whom, giving me a collar, put it on, and then reentered the palace groaning, as the Gods can witness, from the bottom of my heart.

Hindoos need Julian. Ok, Plan B: Hindoos need someone like Julian to fight for us (minus the dying of unnatural causes and prematurely, and definitely not before we've won Finally). Because at present we're just the 'unfortunate laity', quite like the trampled upon Hellenistic laity were until they got an Emperor who represented *them* (being quite one of them).

Instead all we have is a bunch of enemies in positions of power and, where a "Hindu" is finally there, it tends to be some deheathenised entity.

In the meantime, the populace whiles away its time listening to unheathens - "sympathizers" - on "what heathenism is all about"... :doom:



There's also a section on "creativity" in Elst's article. But I spammed my comments in the "contemporary painting" thread for that (#206).