Ancient World Review

The Great God Pan

"Pan was the god of shepherds and flocks, of mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music. He wandered the hills and mountains of Arkadia playing his pan-pipes and chasing Nymphs. His unseen presence aroused feelings of panic in men passing through the remote, lonely places of the wilds." Source: Theoi Greek Mythology.

Pan's original home was Arcadia. He was a pastoral god who lived in the mountain wilderness. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD), 3rd ed. revised, "[m]ountains as such were not worshiped in classical Greece or Italy, but they were places of special cult, to the point that Mt. Maenalus in Arcadia was considered sacred to Pan in its entirety."

Pan's name means "guardian of the flocks" and his appearance -- half man and half goat -- is a classic example of divine theriomorphism, a religious belief common to the region. "His usual attributes of syrinx and lagobolon (a device for catching hares) mark him out as a shepherd." (OCD)

Pan's syrinx was a pan flute, an ancient wind instrument which is still used in syrupy"indigenous world music" and even in some jazz and quasi-classical music. According to the myths, Pan lusted after a nymph named Syrinx and chased her through the woods, but she begged the river nymphs for help and they turned her into a patch of reeds. Pan gathered up some of the reeds and used them to make his pipes.

Half human, half animal, Pan is a primordial figure who dates back to the shamanistic landscape of prehistoric Greece. Shepherds sacrificed to him and he was a hunting god "concerned with small animals such as hares, partridges and small birds..." (OCD)

According to the OCD, "...after an unsuccessful hunt, young men would beat Pan's statue with squills. In this way they would stimulate Pan's powers of fertility and direct it towards the animal domain." He was a protector of shepherds and of soldiers patrolling the mountains and he could "exercise a type of savage and violent possession."

The god could cause panic, a word derived from his name."The Greeks believed that he often wandered peacefully through the woods, playing a pipe, but when accidentally awakened from his noontime nap he could give a great shout that would cause flocks to stampede. From this aspect of Pan's nature Greek authors derived the word panikon, 'sudden fear..,'" according to Wikipedia.

This sudden fear was connected to ancient hunting techniques. "Prehistoric humans used mass panic as a technique when hunting animals, especially ruminants. Herds reacting to unusually strong sounds or unfamiliar visual effects were directed towards cliffs, where they eventually jumped to their deaths when cornered." (Ibid) I'm not sure if this particular hunting method was ever used in ancient Greece, however.

According to the OCD, the Greeks "liked to worship Pan, together with Hermes and the nymphs, in sacred caves, recalling the figure of the Arcadian goatherd. But in his homeland of Arcadia, though he is fond of mountains, well away from human habitation, Pan does not live in caves, and he is not absent from cities. Little is known of his public cult. In Athens, it involved the sacrifice of a castrated goat."

Pan was also associated with the ancient Greek word for all.  "From this, word-play leads to the association which made Pan in the Roman period into a universal god, the All." (OCD)

The Cult Of Dionysus - The God Of Wine

Notes: "Throughout antiquity, [Dionysus] was first and foremost the god of wine and intoxication. His other provinces include ritual madness or ecstasy (mania); the mask, impersonation, and the fictional world of the theater; and, almost antonymically, the mysterious realm of the dead and the expectation of an afterlife blessed with the joys of Dionysus." -- Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised).

Dionysus was a foreign, perhaps Thracian god, a barbarian deity whose "wild nature was ultimately civilized and sublimated with the help of the Delphic Apollo," according to the German classical scholar, Erwin Rohde (OCD). The rites of the Dionysian Mysteries were "based on a seasonal death-rebirth theme (common among agricultural cults) and spirit possession," according to Wikipedia, and centered around wild, trance-inducing processions and ceremonies:

"Following the torches as they dipped and swayed in the darkness, they climbed mountain paths with head thrown back and eyes glazed, dancing to the beat of the drum which stirred their blood' [or 'staggered drunkenly with what was known as the Dionysus gait']. 'In this state of ekstasis or enthusiasmos, they abandoned themselves, dancing wildly and shouting 'Euoi!' [the god's name] and at that moment of intense rapture became identified with the god himself. They became filled with his spirit and acquired divine powers." -- Hoyle, Peter, Delphi, London : Cassell, 1967. Cf. p. 76. 

The cult of Dionysus is said to have included slaves and (according to the myths) women known as maenads who engaged in orgies of irrational, bloody slaughter while possessed by their god. In The Bacchae by Euripedes, for example, the hapless king of Thebes, Pentheus, hides in a tree to spy on the secret rituals, only to come to a very bad end.  According to Wikipedia, "Dionysus, revealing himself, called out to his followers and pointed out the man in the tree. This drove the Maenads wild. Led by Agave, [Pentheus's mother], they forced the trapped Pentheus down from the tree top, ripped off his limbs, his head, and tore his body into pieces."

The Bacchae is a fantastic play, by the way. Very dark and violent. Highly recommended.

In the myths the followers of Dionysus took "delight in eating raw flesh," but this probably never happened in real life (?) According to the OCD, "in poetry and vase-painting, Dionysus and his mythical maenads tear apart live animals with their bare hands and eat them raw. But the divinely inflicted madness of myth was not a blueprint for actual rites, and the notion that maenadism 'swept over Greece like wildfire' is a Romantic construct that has to be abandoned along with the suggestion that the maenads sacramentally consumed Dionysus in the shape of his sacred animal."

The Romans called Dionysus Bacchus and his rites the Bacchanalia. Always suspicious of private organizations, both religious and secular, the Roman authorities saw the cult as subversive and morally degenerate:

"In early Rome, the cult of Bacchus had a presence among the people of central and southern Italy by the 3rd century BC. Like its Greek counterpart, it soon came under suspicion by the ruling class. The cult was divided into local cells with their own hierarchical structures and oaths of loyalty (1). Most of the members were women and their Bacchanalia festivals were believed to include animal sacrifices and sexual orgies. The Roman Senate viewed these gatherings as a threat against Roman authority, banning the cult and the Bacchanalia in 186 BC." Source: Ancient Peoples.

(1) The Roman government had good reason to be suspicious of underground groups like this. In their experience, private organizations such as craft guilds and trade associations (which usually had a religious component) had a tendency to become centers of political agitation. The cell structure of the Dionysian cult in Rome was a bad sign as well, at least from the Senate's point of view (cells are a common feature of espionage networks and terrorist groups). Note that the organization of the cult was almost identical to the organization of early Christianity, another cult surrounded with rumors of foreign rituals and bizarre sexual practices.

The London Althing - Meeting Of "Heathens" (2012)

These are heathens? Give me a break. It looks more like a Liberal Party meeting or a Presbyterian Sunday School class with some ancient history, costumes, candles and electronic music thrown in for atmosphere. Real heathens wouldn't sit around listening to some "spiritual leader" prattle on about Harmony and the Fellowship of Man and how everyone is divine and all that touchy-feely huggle blather. Real heathens would gather in the wilderness and conduct a ritual sacrifice designed to appease their primordial gods.

UK "Pagans" Demand Return Of Church Buildings Stolen 1,300 Years Ago

"A group of pagans has written to the Archbishop of Canterbury demanding two churches to make amends for those it says were stolen 1,300 years ago." Source: The Telegraph.

"The Odinist Fellowship, which represents 1,000 members of the pagan religion, wrote to the Church of England last month asking for two churches to be returned to make up for actions which took place during the Christianisation of England."

Comment: The UK Odinists aren't really pagans in any historical sense of the term (see next post), but they're right about the way Christianity suppressed paganism in England. The church fought a centuries-long culture war against paganism all over Europe and frequently built their sanctuaries on top of pagan temples and other sites. So it seems only right and proper for Odinists to demand reparations now (not to mention that it's kind of entertaining).

I don't expect anything to come of this, but who knows? The Church of England has become so infected with political correctness that it just might hand over a couple of its churches the same way it's trying to hand over England to the immigrant invasion. Still, the CoE is in big trouble due to declining congregations, so maybe all the Odinists have to do is wait for the church to collapse, buy up the churches and turn them back into "pagan" temples. That would be an interesting twist after all these centuries.

Modern Pagans Aren't Real Pagans

Modern pagans like to say they're "keeping the old ways alive," but the truth is that they're not pagans at all, at least not in any real historical sense of the term. Whatever they call themselves -- "Odinists," "Heathens," "Neo-Druids," etc. -- they're basically just Live Action Role Players who make up their rituals and beliefs as they go along, ignoring the little we do know about actual pagan religions.

The most glaring problem with modern pagans is that they don't conduct ritual sacrifices--except in an extremely watered-down, safe and above all legal form. They replace this central aspect of real pagan religion with various invented rituals and "theologies" that never actually existed in the ancient world.

Is It Possible To Live An Iron Age Life In The Modern World?

Comment: Many groups including experimental archaeologists have tried to replicate the lifestyles of prehistoric and medieval cultures. Some of these groups, like the one in the 1978 BBC documentary, Living In The Past, have spent various lengths of time living under past conditions, but they always ended up returning to the modern world with its undeniable conveniences and labor-saving devices. And who can blame them? After all, these were just temporary experiments. But what if a group of modern "neopagans" actually tried to do this for real? What would happen?

Most people living in the modern West would die like flies if they were suddenly transported back to the Iron Age and couldn't return after a few weeks or months. Just staying alive back then was a full-time job in itself, at least for most of the population, and it must have been precarious, but despite all the hardships life couldn't have been too harsh, at least not all the time, or no one would have survived.

Let's say that a group of modern "pagans" decided to start living like this full-time. They could band together, form an agricultural co-op or something, buy some land and return to an Iron Age way of life, building their own shelters, making their own clothes and tools, growing and hunting their own food. To be truly authentic, their community should be based on solid archaeological evidence, which means, for one thing, that they would have to dispense with their idiotic and ahistorical New Age "religions." 

Real pagans were agrarian and they practiced blood sacrifice. They didn't live in cities and drive out to Stonehenge a couple times a year to get loaded and dance around like Hollywood Apaches to the beat of drum circles while the cops kept an eye out for drunks and dope dealers. I've written several posts on this site mocking the "pagans, Druids and pantheists" who swarm over Stonehenge for every solstice and equinox, but I can understand their alienation from Christianity and the modern world.

Modern pagans have a serious problem. There's very little evidence about how people lived back then and what they believed, so the modern pagan has to make it all up and the result is usually ludicrous. This got me thinking about what an authentic neopagan movement would look like and two basic requirements came to mind. First of all, as I've already said, real neopagans should toss out everything that isn't backed by solid archaeological evidence. Second, they should drop out of the modern world and go back to living in the Iron Age like the people in this video did. Note: They couldn't recreate a Stone Age hunting and gathering existence for obvious reasons.

They would have to live like this all the time, though. There would be no going back. They would essentially have to live like Iron Age farmers and, given enough time, some of them might actually figure out how to survive as clans, living in many ways like the modern Amish. Even if they did, though, they would still be surrounded by the modern world and there would be no way to escape it entirely. They would have to pay taxes on their land, for instance, so they would need to set up small businesses or something.

And that's the catch. There's no way to escape the overpoliced total state in the modern world. Not completely. These neopagans would be anachronisms, psychologically modern humans living an Iron Age life in the center of a decaying, post-industrial civilization. Keeping their communities going at that point would probably be even harder than learning how to feed themselves and stay warm in the winter.

It could be done, but the first generations would be in for a shock and a lot of them would drop out very quickly. Living without electricity is one thing, raising your own food another, but to be truly authentic, they couldn't use modern medicines or hospitals and the women would have to give birth naturally out there in the woods. There would be sickness, malnutrition, deaths. Their children couldn't go to modern schools. The dead would have to be buried right there on the land--something that could be done here in the States as recently as the the middle of the 20th Century, but which is probably illegal now. The list of problems goes on and on, but this biggest problem is this:

The modern state would never allow people to live like this. An authentic Iron Age life is impossible in the modern world because we have lost too much freedom.

Note: The rest of this documentary can be found here.

The Stonehenge Burials

Stonehenge "maintains its less explored, darker aspects, not least of which are the enigmatic burials scattered in and around this famous Neolithic monument. What can these burials, both cremation and inhumation, tell us about the rituals and activities that went on at Stonehenge more than four millennia ago?" Source: "The Stonehenge Burials," Ancient History Encyclopedia.

"...During the 20th century CE nearly 60 cremation burials were uncovered at Stonehenge, with perhaps a couple of hundred more remaining in unexcavated areas of the monument. Interestingly, the latest of these cremations has been radiocarbon dated to c. 2300 BCE, which illustrates that cremation was still being practiced at Stonehenge long after the bluestones and sarsens had been erected."

The Long History Of Vampires

Comment: The narrator was talking too quickly for me to catch the name of this particular Balkan vampire. Whoever he was, he definitely isn't the "earliest recorded vampire," unless the narrator meant that he's the earliest named vampire or the earliest vampire in the modern sense of the word, which could be true for all I know. Vampires have been around for thousands of years, but the picture of the vampire we have today is only a few centuries old and apparently originated in eastern Europe:

"The notion of vampirism has existed for millennia. Cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, Ancient Greeks, and Romans had tales of demons and spirits which are considered precursors to modern vampires. Despite the occurrence of vampire-like creatures in these ancient civilizations, the folklore for the entity we know today as the vampire originates almost exclusively from early 18th-century southeastern Europe."

The modern concept of the vampire appears to be based on very ancient legends which first appeared in the Near East thousands of years ago. I don't have any evidence for this, but I wouldn't be surprised if the legends could be traced all the way back to the Paleolithic.

"Among the elaborate and extensive demonology of Babylonia and Assyria the Vampire had a very prominent place. From the very earliest times Eastern races have always held that belief in the existence of dark and malignant powers, evil spirits and ghosts which is, we cannot doubt it, naturally implanted in the heart of man and which it remains for the ignorance and agnosticism of a later day to deny. The first inhabitants of Babylonia, the Sumerians, recognized three distinct classes of evil spirits, any one of whom was always ready to attack those who by any accident or negligence laid themselves open to these invasions." Source: The Vampire, His Kith and Kin, by Montague Summers, Chapter 4: "The Vampire In Assyria, the East and Some Ancient Countries."

"The most famous vampire is, of course, Bram Stoker's Dracula, though those looking for a historical 'real' Dracula often cite Romanian prince Vlad Tepes (1431-1476), after whom Stoker is said to have modeled some aspects of his Dracula character. The characterization of Tepes as a vampire, however, is a distinctly Western one; in Romania, he is viewed not as a blood-drinking sadist but as a national hero who defended his empire from the Ottoman Turks." Source: Live Science (2014).

The legend of the vampire seems to have originated in the very ancient and widespread belief that "blood is life." It's no accident that blood sacrifice was also an integral part of ancient pagan rituals. According to Montague Summers (who believed that vampires are real), many cultures saw blood as a medicine. Several African tribes, for instance, treated the sick and dying by giving them human blood to drink. Blood has always been thought to have rejuvenating powers that could bring the shades of the dead back to a semblance of life. In the Odyssey, for example, when Oddysseus enters Hades to learn how to get home, he makes a blood offering to the dead. The spirits have to drink the blood of his sacrifice before they can become substantial enough to talk to him.

Vampires, the Undead, are essentially dead bodies which require regular infusions of blood to maintain their strange existence and keep from decaying. They are physical manifestations of the occult power of blood to restore youth and vitality. The transformation of these bloodsucking corpses into sex symbols in the modern world is truly bizarre, but it obviously has something to do with the fact that the victims in vampire movies (and the female vampires) tend to be voluptuous women and the vampire attacks are usually presented as a kind of seduction.

The figure of the vampire is so fascinating that an entire Goth-style subculture of "real-life vampires" has emerged. These people claim to be actual vampires and the most extreme of them have gone so far as to have fangs surgically implanted. Technically, I guess, this makes them part of the larger body-modification culture. Basically they're LARPING in a group fantasy world and most of them don't make very convincing vampires.

Many people still believe that vampires are real. For instance, the following 2012 video describes how a Serb village was living in fear of a local vampire, Sava Savanovic, believed to be loose in the countryside after the collapse of his ancestral home.

"'People are very worried. Everybody knows the legend of this vampire and the thought that he is now homeless and looking for somewhere else and possibly other victims is terrifying people,' Miodrag Vujetic, local municipal assembly member, told ABC News. 'We are all frightened.'" -- ABC News (2012). For more information, see The Bloody Truth About Serbia's Vampire.

It would be easy to make fun of these people and call them superstitious peasants, but that would be kind of hypocritical considering how superstitious Americans are. This is also a pretty religious country. Millions of people believe in the supernatural in one form or another. For instance, many Christians believe in demons and angels and spirits. They believe that Jesus raised the dead and came back from the dead himself, but they'd probably laugh at the idea of vampires or call them demons, which is pretty close to the definition in many ancient cultures. One way or another, if you believe in the supernatural that opens the door to all sorts of things, including vampires.

Note: It has been scientifically proven that Christopher Lee was the greatest Dracula of all time.

The Cult Of Cybele: Mother Of The Gods

"A 2,100-year-old marble statue of Cybele, an ancient Phrygian mother goddess, has been unearthed in excavations in northwestern Turkish province of Ordu [Greek Kotyora] located on the Black Sea coast." Source: Archaeology News Network.

Notes: Cybele may have evolved from an even older fertility goddess in the proto-city of Catalhoyuk (7500-5700 BC), also located in ancient Anatolia. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised), Cybele was "the great mother-goddess of Anatolia, associated in myth, and later at least in cult, with her youthful lover Attis. Pessinus in Phyrgia was her chief sanctuary, and the cult appears at an early date in Lydia."

According to Theoi Greek Mythology, "Kybele (Cybele) was the ancient Phrygian Mother of the Gods, a primal nature goddess worshiped with orgiastic rites in the mountains of central and western Anatolia. The Greeks identified her with their own mother of the gods--the Titaness Rhea."

The cult of Cybele was apparently introduced fairly early (3rd cent. BC) in Rome. "Thanks to its official status and early naturalization in Rome and in Ostia, the cult spread rapidly through the provinces, especially in Gaul and Africa, and was readily accepted as a municipal cult. Its agrarian character made it more popular with the fixed populations than with the soldiers, and it was especially favored by women." (OCD)

Cybele was also known as the Magna Mater or Great Mother (1). According to The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook of Ancient Texts, edited by Marvin W. Meyer (p.113), "she was honored as the mother goddess of fertility, but her particular power was evidenced in the wilds of the untamed forests and mountains." After Cybele entered the official Roman pantheon, "she was to function practically as a Roman national goddess" and enjoyed great favor with the emperors starting with Claudius in the first century.

(1) Several other goddesses were also referred to as "Great Mother."

"The most well-known Roman festival in honor of the Anatolian deities [Cybele and her consort Attis] was celebrated in the spring, during March," according to The Ancient Mysteries (p.114). These rites were associated with violent religious frenzy. "Marsh 24 was aptly named The Day of Blood. On this day some of the fanatical celebrants flogged themselves until they bled and sprinkled their blood upon the image and altars in the sanctuary, while others are said to have imitated Attis by castrating themselves." (Ibid) Bulls were also sacrificed in honor of the Great Mother of the Gods.

Several Roman historians and poets described the cult of Cybele in detail. Livy, for instance, described how the cult was first brought to Rome in his History of Rome (Book 29.10-14):

"About this time a sudden wave of superstition swept over Rome. The Sibylline Books had been consulted because it had rained stones that year more than usual, and in the Books a prophecy was found that if ever a foreign enemy should invade Italy, he could be defeated and driven out if Cybele, The Idaean Mother of the Gods, were brought from Pessinus to Rome." (Ibid, p. 121).

Christian writers denounced the cult of Cybele and the church banned it altogether when they gained the secular power required to force their intolerant monotheism on the pagan world, but the tradition of the Great Mother still survives in the figure of the Virgin Mary.

The Temple Of Isis In Pompeii

"The Temple of Isis is a Roman temple dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis. This small and almost intact temple was among one of the first discoveries during the excavation of Pompeii in 1764." (Wikipedia)

"... The preserved Pompeian temple is actually the second structure; the original building built during the reign of Augustus was damaged in an earlier earthquake of 62 AD. Seventeen years later with the massive volcanic eruption, the Iseum [Isis temple] alone was the sole temple to be completely rebuilt—ahead even of the Capitolium.

Next video shows the standing ruins of the temple as they appeared in 2009. All of its wall paintings and statues were apparently moved to the Archaeological Museum at Naples (Italian only? The English version of the site doesn't seem to exist.)

"The worship of Isis was [originally] treated with suspicion in official circles because of its associations with Ptolemaic Egypt," according to Pompeii: The Last Day by Paul Wilkinson (p.47). "After the annexation of Egypt by Augustus in 30 BC, however, attitudes relaxed and by AD 38 Rome itself had a Temple of Isis. The cult of Isis had its own full-time priests, whereas the more official Roman religions did not."

More views of the temple (including the entrance to an underground ritual purification chamber) can be seen in the next video. Turn up the volume.

According to Pompeii: The Last Day (pp. 176-177), "The sanctuary around the Temple of Isis is enclosed by walls on its east and north sides. It adjoins the Samnite Gymnasium [1] to the west and the theaters to the south. Very little is left of the original temple because it had been almost completely destroyed by the earthquake of AD 62. It was completely rebuilt in interesting circumstances by Numerius Popidius Celsinus. He was a six-year-old child who was admitted into the ruling body of Pompeii, the collegium decurionum, as a reward for his generosity (his father having actually provided the finances)." [2]

[1] "In the 5th century BC, the Samnites conquered [Pompeii] (and all the other towns of Campania); the new rulers imposed their architecture and enlarged the town. After the Samnite Wars (4th century BC), Pompeii was forced to accept the status of socium of Rome, maintaining, however, linguistic and administrative autonomy. In the 4th century BC, it was fortified. Pompeii remained faithful to Rome during the Second Punic War." (Wikipedia)

[2] According to Wilkinson, Numerius Popidius Celsinus was the name of the six-year-old child, but other sources give this as the father's name. It's possible that they both had the same name, however. One of the temple inscriptions reads "'Numerius Popidius Celsinus, son of Numerius, rebuilt at his own expense from its foundations, the Temple of Isis, which had collapsed in an earthquake; because of his generosity, although he was only six years old, the town councilors nominated him into their number free of charge.'" Source: The Post Hole. The Latin and English translation of the inscription can be found here.

Note: The video above is part of a longer lecture series on a variety of ancient history topics.

Isis was an important deity in Pompeii, probably because of the goddess's association with water:

"Because this temple served the Isis cult and was not a public civil space, the Temple of Isis, or Iseum, and Isis herself must have held special meaning and value for the city of Pompeii. Pompeii’s seafaring economy and the rise of personal religion in the Roman world may explain this high value. Since Pompeii relied on commercial seafaring to support its economy, Isis’s emphasis on stable and life-giving water defeating the often treacherous, unpredictable, and sometimes-deadly water of the sea, strengthened the local cult. The confluence of architecture, art, and rituals implies why the Pompeiians so highly valued a cult sanctuary – gentle Isis, offering resurrection and regulated water, provided a comforting counterbalance to unpredictable Neptune." Source: The Post Hole.

Related: The Temples of Pompeii

Oriental and Mystery Cults in Pompeii