Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mancy (Special Mention) (8) Cryptomancy

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Hopefully not that ominous – Ten of Swords, Rider-Waite Tarot illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith

 

(8) CRYPTOMANCY

 

It’s an omen!

According to Wikipedia’s list of methods of divination, cryptomancy is divination by omens, although the prefix crypto- designates hidden or secret, as in hidden or secret signs. Which begs one of the biggest questions for this method of divination – what is an omen?

And there’s the rub. The problem with this as a distinct method of divination is that most, if not all, methods of divination ultimately relied on what might be described as divining or interpreting omens from whatever it was they looked at for their subject matter.

Augury, for example, often used as a synonym for omen, originates in interpreting omens from the behaviour or flight of birds – or ornithomancy, as we saw in theriomancy. And so on.

Accordingly, omens can be somewhat mundane, but I prefer my omens to be portentous – as in portent, also often used as a synonym for omen. I also prefer my omens to be ominous – a word I understand to be derived from omen, and to convey foreboding.

In other words, I prefer my omens to be big and bad – and ideally weird. Comets and eclipses. Animals born with two heads or no eyes. Spontaneous animal or human combustion. Raving and gibbering hooded figures. And so on.

So as a method of divination, it’s not distinct from any other method of divination, except to the extent its omens might be bigger, badder or weirder.

It doesn’t exactly leap out as a school of magic either, but perhaps with a little imagination might be adapted to a school of magic powered by charms, curses, and hexes. I can imagine a luck-fuelled school of magic in urban fantasy, perhaps styled as tychomancy, based on superstitions, lucky symbols or signs of bad luck – perhaps even powered by channelling signs of bad luck (broken mirrors and so on) into good magic, like some sort of mojo judo.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mythologies (Special Mention) (8) Tao

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(8) TAO

 

Wu wei – or Tao and the art of doing nothing effectively.

Like Zen, Taoism can resemble a mythology but of masters of the Tao rather than gods or heroes – and that’s even before you get to how Taoism is intertwined with Chinese folk religion, alchemy, astrology, martial arts, feng shui and chi or qi, let alone pantheons of deities such as the Three Pure Ones or the Jade Emperor.

Taoism emphasizes living in balance or harmony with the Tao, which is variously interpeted but I prefer its interpretation as the Way – the natural order of the universe or cosmos that human intuition must discern in order to realize the potential for individual wisdom. Like the Matrix (which was also influenced by Taoism or at least other Asian religions), you cannot be told about the Tao, you have to see it for yourself – “this intuitive knowing of ‘life’ cannot be grasped as a concept; it is known through actual living experience of one’s everyday being”. Some of the most common metaphors for the Way essentially involve going with the flow – depicting the Tao as a fluid force like water.

Perhaps its most famous visual symbol is the taijitu, better known as the yin-yang symbol – encapsulating much of the concepts of Taoism within it – which of course I used as the feature image for this entry

Taoism advocates naturalness, spontaneity, simplicity, detachment from desire, and wu wei. The Taoist concept of wu wei is a particular favorite of mine, often translated as the art of doing nothing effectively. Finally – a religious doctrine which I’ve spent my whole life practicing to achieve, although to be honest I’m not sure if I’ve been doing it effectively

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Books (Special Mention) (8) Walter Burkert – Greek Religion

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Wiley-Blackwell, 1st edition

 

(8) WALTER BURKERT – GREEK RELIGION

 

If Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy and Robert Graves’ The Greek Myths are my Old Testament of classical mythology, Burkert’s Greek Religion is my New Testament. Alternatively, the three are my holy trinity of classical mythology (which I suppose would make Nietzsche the Father, Graves the Son and Burkert the Holy Spirit of classical mythology).

No, seriously. For me, Nietzsche and Graves are poles at the other end of a thematic spectrum from Burkert – which I suppose would make all three the points of a thematic triangle. Whatever.

The line from Nietzsche to Burkert is perhaps more obvious – both came from a long tradition of German classicists or classical philologists, indeed its most prominent figures in the English-speaking world (or at least authors of its most prominent books), but in some ways diametrically opposed from each other.

Nietzsche essentially extrapolated a recurring dichotomy of the Apollonian and the Dionysian from classical mythology, above all in its literary manifestation in Greek tragedy, hence his title The Birth of Tragedy. He wrote as an eccentric poet-philosopher, or as he himself described it, a ‘rhapsodizer’ (prompting thoughts of Nietzsche as rhap-artist), not unlike his own prophetic ‘madman’ and apostle of the death of God before his time – “I have come too early…my time is not yet”.

Graves strikes me as similar to Nietzsche – probably someone somewhere has studied or written of the influence of Nietzsche on Graves, if any, but I don’t know anything about that subject – writing as a fellow rhapsodizer or poet, but as an apostle of the Goddess rather than of the death of God, extrapolating his monomyth of the Goddess or prehistoric matriarchal religion from classical mythology.

Of course, the historical accuracy of either has been almost universally contested or considered to be idiosyncratic – “of value only as a guide to the author’s personal mythology”. But who cares? They’re fun! And it’s hard to argue with poetry.

Burkert’s The Greek Religion on the other hand, originally published in his native German in 1977 and translated into English in 1985, has been widely accepted as a standard work in the field. And unlike Nietzsche or Graves, Burkert pretty much extrapolates nothing, robustly sticking to the facts of his literary or archaeological sources.

Burkert presents classical polytheism as inherently chaotic in nature, but at the heart of classical religion was sacrificial ritual – “The term gods…remains fluid, whereas sacrifice is a fact”.

His section headings say it all about his comprehensive survey of Greek religion – Prehistory and the Minoan-Mycenaean Age; Ritual and Sanctuary; The Gods (the Olympian dirty dozen and the balance of the pantheon); The Dead, Heroes and Chthonic Gods; Polis and Polytheism; Mysteries and Asceticism; and Philosophical Religion.

“He describes the various rituals of sacrifice and libation and explains Greek beliefs about purification. He investigates the inspiration behind the great temples at Olympia, Delphi, Delos, and the Acropolis―discussing the priesthood, sanctuary, and oracles. Considerable attention is given to the individual gods, the position of the heroes, and beliefs about the afterlife. The different festivals are used to illuminate the place of religion in the society of the city-state. The mystery cults, at Eleusis and among the followers of Bacchus and Orpheus, are also set in that context. The book concludes with an assessment of the great classical philosophers’ attitudes to religion”.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Top Tens – Miscellany: Top 10 Youtube (Special Mention) (7) Adam Something

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Youtube channel banner as at 23 April 2024

 

(7) ADAM SOMETHING (CZECHIA 2013)

 

Who’d have picked that a moderate leftist Youtube channel with a focus on environmental policy and urbanism would have 1.2 million subscribers?

What can I say? He grows on you. It helps that he has a verbal stylistic flair while tearing vainglorious engineering mega-projects and other environmental or planning pretensions a new one, with a particular focus on cars and transportation policy.

A rarity among my Youtube viewing tastes as a channel featuring political and social commentary, albeit through a narrow lens of environmental and technological commentary.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mancy (Special Mention) (7) Botanomancy

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Lotus flower – public domain image

 

(7) BOTANOMANCY

 

“The force that through the green fuse drives the flower”

Sadly, botanomancy or divination by plants seems to get short shrift compared to theriomancy or divination by animals, even though both probably originate in prehistory – with prehistoric humans depending as much on observations of plant life as they did animal life.

Even the term botanomancy itself is read more narrowly, at least in the Wikipedia entry for it, as divination by burning particular plants (similarly to burning laurel wreaths or daphomancy), but this seems more in the nature of pyromancy.

There are also references to anthomancy or divination by flowers (as well as phyllorhodomancy or divination by rose petals), dendromancy or divination by trees, and phyllomancy or divination by leaves (as well as sycomacy or divination by fig leaves).

However, none of these references elaborate anything by way of divinatory practice in history, although the specificity of some of those references – rose petals or fig leaves – suggest some specific practice. One can imagine divination by scattering rose petals in much the same way as dirt in geomancy and it would make for a more romantic date, if nothing else.

At very least, there’s that romantic divinatory game of plucking petals from a flower – s/he loves me, s/he loves me not…

One can also imagine divination by spots in leaves or fruit and so on, or perhaps patterns of where they fall. There’s also that Celtic tree alphabet (or ogham), which was the weird focus in Robert Graves’ The White Goddess – although it’s hard to tell with that book – in a manner suggestive of divination or magic. In fairness, the Wikipedia reference to dendromancy does note particular trees – “especially oaks, yews, or mistletoe” – and druids seemed to go nuts for that last one.

Ironically, the (vaguely) botanomantic reference which is elaborated in most detail is tasseomancy or divination by patterns in tea leaves or coffee grounds – which however is both a relatively recent method of divination and also more akin to hydromancy by brewing.

As a method of divination, botanomancy just seems a little low tier in comparison even only to theriomancy – perhaps plant life operates on too long (or slow) a time scale for practical divination, or perhaps we just have more of an emotional attachment to animals. Unless you’re communing with the Green in the style of Swamp Thing or Poison Ivy.

As a school of magic, however, I rank it as top tier – again essentially combining the Dungeons and Dragons classes of wizard and druid. It’s arguably up there with the elemental schools of magic – indeed the Chinese had five classical elements, one of which was wood. That’s especially so if you can control or grow plants, again in the style of Swamp Thing or Poison Ivy.

Alternatively, with a little fantasy or imagination it’s up there with theriomancy, but as a literal way of plant powers – with one of many applications replicating the effects of plant-based toxins or drugs.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mythologies (Special Mention) (7) Witchcraft

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Poster for the 2015 film The Witch directed by Robert Eggers

 

(7) WITCHCRAFT

 

Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?

Just a girl and her goat. Or in the case of European witch folklore, of many girls and their great goat

Witchcraft – traditionally defined as the malevolent “use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others” – is something that seems well-nigh universal in mythologies or beliefs throughout the world. Perhaps not surprisingly, as cultures that saw the world in terms of magical or supernatural forces would then see harm or misfortune in terms of such forces malevolently used by some individuals against others.

Nor are beliefs in witchcraft confined to pre-modern history – or more precisely, early modern history, as trials for witchcraft declined in Europe in the late eighteenth century. They persist even today, and even in the form of active witch hunts, apparently with body counts far exceeding those of the European witch hunts, most notably in Africa and India.

Arguably however, witch folklore reached its highest or most definitive form (indeed, giving us the word for witch) in European witch folklore, particularly that of the early modern witch hunts and trials – and it certainly is the witch folklore that is the source of endless fascination for me.

The witchcraft attributed to witches in or by the hunts and trials evolved into a mythos with remarkable complexity and depth. There were the witches themselves, predominantly but not exclusively female (with men as the primary targets of accusations of witchcraft in some areas), with all the various features attributed to them or protections against them – magic and spells of course, the evil eye, flying ointment, necromancy (as with the Biblical Witch of Endor), animal familiars, imps, witch’s marks (to be distinguished from witch marks to ward off witches), witch’s teats, witch’s ladders, and witch balls or bottles (again to ward off witches).

And then there was the witchcraft ‘religion’ itself, usually styled as an anti-religion of service to the Devil in exchange for magic or supernatural power, with its ritual of the Witches Sabbath or Sabbat and all its various elements, not least the great goat himself, the Devil in caprine form, referenced as the Sabbath Goat (as in Goya’s famous paintings) or Baphomet – or Black Phillip to his friends. And of course all the lurid sexual details that went with it – with the osculam infame being particularly hard to dislodge from one’s mind after reading about it.

The historiography of the origins of these elements of witchcraft has evolved into almost as much a mythos as that of witchcraft itself. The standard historical explanation tends towards the various elements of witchcraft being projections from the lurid fantasies of those conducting the witch hunts or trials, which they confirmed by “confessions” extracted under torture (aided by circulation of those same lurid fantasies in popular belief).

Interestingly, the medieval Catholic Church had disdainfully dismissed belief in the existence of witches or witchcraft as pagan superstition (although heresy was another matter) – and it was the advent of Protestantism, and the religious warfare that went with it, that saw the height of the witch hunts and trials.

And then there are the more exotic historical explanations that become something of a mythology of themselves – with the foremost as the witch-cult hypothesis, that saw the elements of witchcraft as the survival of a pagan cult, distorted and persecuted by Christianity. The witch-cult hypothesis reached its sensational height with Margarat Murray in the early twentieth century – possibly influencing modern neo-pagan witchcraft or Wicca, but has since largely been discredited – although some scholars such as Carlo Ginzburg contend that “surviving elements of pre-Christian religion in European folk culture influenced early modern stereotypes of witchcraft”.

And on the topic of Ginzburg, I have a soft spot for his and others’ conjecture of witchcraft including surviving shamanic elements, most notably the use of hallucinatory or psychedelic substances to essentially conjure the Witches Sabbath out of dreams or drug hallucinations – flying ointment as getting high, or tripping witch balls.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
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Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Books (Special Mention) (7) Robert Graves – The White Goddess & The Greek Myths

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Art by Simon Bisley for “Slaine: The Horned God” written by Pat Mills for the 2000 AD comic as one of my favorite adaptations of Graves’ Goddess in popular culture, even more so than it was of Frazer – since it essentially adapted Graves, who in turn adapted Frazer

 

(7) ROBERT GRAVES – THE WHITE GODDESS & THE GREEK MYTHS

 

Graves saw Frazer’s sacred king and raised it with a queen, his titular White Goddess. For Graves, the monomyth was his theme, or rather the great mythic and poetic Theme:

“The Theme, briefly, is the antique story, which falls into thirteen chapters and an epilogue, of the birth, life, death and resurrection of the God of the Waxing Year; the central chapters concern the God’s losing battle with the God of the Waning Year for love of the capricious and all-powerful Threefold Goddess, their mother, bride and layer-out. The poet identifies himself with the God of the Waxing Year and his Muse with the Goddess; the rival is his blood-brother, his other self, his weird.”

However, The White Goddess is not as accessible in its prose as Frazer’s The Golden Bough and is essentially a compilation of poetic musings, which has its shining moments but can often become turgid or bogged down in Graves’ esoteric discussion of the Irish tree alphabet or the poems of Taliesin. And like The Golden Bough, it’s best read as poetry than for factual or historical accuracy.

And he was an apostle of the White Goddess again in his study of Greek mythology. However, it remains my favorite single volume study of Greek mythology.

Essentially it comes in two parts.

The first part is a conventional compendium of Greek mythology – literary retellings of the various myths from their sources – and it is this part that is the basis for the book as my favorite single volume study of Greek mythology, albeit somewhat dense in its prose style.

The second part – his interpretative notes or commentary – is where things get more wild, albeit all in good poetic fun. This is where Graves ‘decodes’ or reconstructs Greek mythology to his monomyth of the Goddess or prehistoric matriarchal religion – “Graves interpreted Bronze Age Greece as changing from a matriarchal society…to a patriarchal one under continual pressure from victorious Greek-speaking tribes. In the second stage local kings came to each settlement as foreign princes, reigned by marrying the hereditary queen, who represented the Triple Goddess, and were ritually slain by the next king after a limited period, originally six months. Kings managed to evade the sacrifice for longer and longer periods, often by sacrificing substitutes, and eventually converted the queen, priestess of the Goddess, into a subservient and chaste wife, and in the final stage had legitimate sons to reign after them”.

So there you go. Of course, the historical accuracy of Graves’ interpretation or commentary has been almost universally contested or considered to be idiosyncratic – “the interpretive notes are of value only as a guide to the author’s personal mythology”. His characteristic rejoinder was to plead poetic privilege, essentially rebuking his critics or classical scholars “You’re not poets!”. And it’s hard to argue with poetry.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Top Tens – Miscellany: Top 10 Youtube (Special Mention) (6) Pax Romana

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Youtube channel banner as at 22 April 2024

 

(6) PAX ROMANA (USA 2020)

 

 

“The guy who updates you daily on the status of the Roman Empire, now brings you his sh*t posting in video form.”

 

How it started – it’s gone.

 

How it’s going – it’s still gone but mostly on X (not the Roman numeral but the artist formerly known as Twitter).

 

It all started with the Daily Roman Updates page on F-book and the first post “it’s gone”, echoing the rise of Rome itself from humble origin to empire as Daily Roman Updates grew to a virtual empire of humorous memes on Roman history. First in the Italy of F-book, through the mare nostrum of social media on Twitter and Instagram, and ultimately to the titular Pax Romana of Youtube.

 

Sadly, this Roman memepire – and yes, I borrowed that from the title of one of its videos – has declined and fallen somewhat, not unlike the empire itself. The Youtube channel is presently dormant, not unlike that other Roman special mention Dovahhatty but in Pax Romana’s case apparently due to demonetization. Hopefully to rebound like the empire did (until it didn’t) but the beating heart of Daily Roman Updates remains its profile on X, in terms of post activity and subscribers.

 

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mancy (Special Mention) (6) Arithmancy

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Yes – it’s one of my favorite memes, the math lady / confused lady featuring Brazilian actress Renata Sorrah playing Nazare Tedesco in a scene from Senhora do Destino

 

(6) ARITHMANCY

 

Lucky numbers and sacred geometry!

Also Pythagoras – whom I used to think of as a grounded philosopher and mathematician from his theorem at school, because schools don’t teach how much of a mystical kook he was as well. Mind you, the same goes for Greek philosophers in general, as E.R. Dodds propounded in The Greeks and the Irrational.

And yes – apparently numerology was known as arithmancy prior to the 20th century, and frankly still should be rather than coopting a name more appropriate to a science to itself, similarly to astrology. Also – numeromancy was sitting right there!

In fairness, similarly to astrology contributing to astronomy, numerology may have contributed to science, albeit more numerology in the broader sense of numeric patterns – as per British mathematician I. J. Good, “there have been a few examples of numerology that have led to theories that transformed society…It would be fair enough to say that numerology was the origin of the theories of electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, gravitation….”

Arithmancy or divinatory numerology essentially involves “a belief in an occult, divine or mystical relationship between a number and one or more coinciding events” – or that certain numbers have certain mystical or symbolic properties. Or in short – lucky (and unlucky) numbers. The same concept can also be applied to the mathematical properties of geometry – hence sacred geometry.

As for the numbers themselves, they may come from some process of random selection (not unlike modern lotteries) or from assigning numeric values to other things, such as an alphanumeric system for letters in words or names (overlapping with my previous special mention for nomancy or onomancy).

That last is also known as gematria, a practice dating back to ancient history and (in)famously appearing in the Bible as 666 or the Number of the Beast in the Book of Apocalypse – or as I like to quip, that sixy beast – for which the scholarly consensus is that it is an alphanumeric key to the Roman Emperor Nero. (It’s a little more messy than that – I understand it wasn’t the actual Nero, but some sort of projected supercharged revenant Nero back from the dead, and could also be rendered alternatively as 616, as it was in some versions).

The strength of arithmancy or numerology as both method of divination and school of magic lies in the elegance and explanatory power of mathematics to explain the fundamental properties of our reality – something which is ever more so in modern science, where whole swathes of reality only seem explicable entirely as increasingly arcane mathematical formulae.

To the point that our physical reality often seems a coalescence or crystallization of mathematics or numbers – it is not so much that everything has a true name but a true number.

I can’t resist closing with two of my favorite incarnations of arithmancy in science fiction.

The first is the basic arithmantic principles underlying the Laundry series by Charles Stross – where the magic is essentially arithmancy or mathematics (and where the growing computing power of humanity and its machines will reach a threshold drawing the attention of hostile Lovecraftian entities).

The second is my favorite version of arithmancy in a charming (and characteristically horny) short story by Fritz Leiber – in which the number seven assumes a sexy female personification. Hot damn – that would have made maths classes more interesting at school!

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mythologies (Special Mention) (6) Magic

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1 The Magician from the Rider-Waite Tarot illustrated by Pamela Colman-Smith

 

(6) MAGIC

 

Abracadabra!

Where else to feature magic but in mythology? Although…magic is not so definitive of mythology as it is of, say, fantasy. Yes – you have what might be termed (supernatural) magic throughout mythology, but usually as characteristic of divine or semi-divine beings, as part of their inherent essence or nature. You tend not to have magic in the more narrowly defined sense of functional magic – that is, magic as the human “application of beliefs, rituals or actions employed in the belief that they can manipulate natural or supernatural beings and forces”. When mortal humans or heroes tend to use magic in mythology, it is as a gift from the gods – because it was given to them by the gods or other supernatural beings.

Functional magic tends to occupy that eclectic middle ground (or perhaps no-man’s land?) between mythology and more general folklore or ritual. And even more so between religion and science. I like to quip that religion is organized magic. I stand by that quip, but religion tends more to the role of magic in mythology – as something that is given by divine power rather than manipulated by humans, indeed tending to see the latter as…competition at best. (I understand that historian Keith Thomas proposed a similar thesis, albeit in a narrower historical setting, in his Religion and the Decline of Magic).

I tend to see religion more as Sir James George Frazer did – as closer to proto-science, or an effort to create a system of cause and effect, albeit without science’s rigor to exclude personal beliefs from the results of observation. Indeed, beliefs are kind of the point of magic. Frazer coined the term sympathetic magic, dividing it further into magical principles of similarity (like affects like) and contagion (things that have been in contact continue to affect each other)

However, the classifications or types of magic could very well be the subject of their own top ten. White, grey and black magic. High and low magic. Modern magic (often styled as magick) – ceremonial and chaos magic. And of course stage magic – or illusion. Apotropaic magic. Blood magic. Elemental and natural magic. Wild magic. Alchemy – elixirs and potions. Incantations. Thaumaturgy. Theurgy. Magical objects – amulets and talismans. Magical symbols – runes and sigils. Curses. Grimoires. Runes. True names.

And of course the schools of magic popularized by Dungeons and Dragons – abjuration, conjuration, divination, enchantment, illusion, necromancy and transmutation.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
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