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pat.northsky.social
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@pat.northsky.social
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#Dionysus2028

Are you tired of being repressed? Don't you just want to reaffirm the urge to life?
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pat.northsky.social
The Land Where the Blues Began — Alan Lomax
Although this has been called the age of anxiety, it might better be termed the century of the blues, after the moody song style that was born sometime around 1900 in the Mississippi Delta. The blues has always been a state of being as well as a way of singing. Leadbelly once told me, "When you lie down at night, turning from side to side, and you can't be satisfied no way you do, Old Man Blues got you." A hundred years ago only blacks in the Deep South were seized by the blues. Now the whole world begins to know them. In order to hear the blues, when I was very young, my girlfriend and I slipped into the black ghetto of my Southern hometown under the cover of darkness. If we'd been caught there, we would probably have been expelled from the university. Nowadays everyone sings and dances to bluesy music, and the mighty river of the blues uncoils in the ear of the planet. Indeed, the blues may have become the best-known tune humans have ever sung. At the same time, all of us are beginning to experience the melancholy dissatisfaction that weighed upon the hearts of the black people of the Mississippi Delta, the land where the blues began. Feelings of anomie and alienation, of orphaning and rootlessness-the sense of being a commodity rather than a person; the loss of love and of family and of place this modern syndrome was the norm for the cotton farmers and the transient laborers of the Deep South a hundred years ago. I'm a poor boy and a long old ways from home... This song arose in a period much like our own. Our species has never been more powerful and wealthy, nor more ill at ease. Homeless and desperate people in America and all over the world live in the shadow of undreamed-of productivity and luxury. So it was in the Mississippi Delta in the early years of this century. Boom times in cotton gave a handful of planters easy riches, while the black majority who produced the cotton lived in sordid shanties or roamed from job to job. Some blacks attempted to become free enterprisers, but were so hemmed in by caste barriers that very few succeeded in rising in the world. The rebellious were kept in their place by gun and lynch laws, ruthlessly administered by the propertied. Our times today are similarly out of joint, similarly terrorized. Technology has made the species rich and resourceful as never before, but the wealth and the resources rest with a few individuals, corporations, and favored nations. Most earthlings, most nations, are distanced from technological luxury, and that imbalance is presided over by armed forces capable of destroying the planet itself. Rage and anxiety pervade the emotions and the actions of both the haves and the have-nots. And the sound of the the worried blues of the old Delta is heard in back alleys and palaces, alike. In such threatening situations most people grow careful about speaking out. The fate of whistle blowers and nonconformists is well known. Those most favored by fortune become the most reticent about the inequities that profit them. The poor eat humble pie and only smile when their masters are present. Everyone learns to remain silent in the face of monstrous ironies. In the South I grew up in, for example, almost everyone had convinced themselves that blacks were happy. In fact, they were excluded from public facilities, were poorly paid, badly housed, constantly insulted and bullied, and were without equal rights before the law. Nevertheless, everybody, especially the oppresse… Every one of the the world-renowned black American genres from ragtime to rap bears the mark of this "folk" heritage. Clearly also it provided the resources employed by the Delta blacks in manifold adaptations to their harsh destiny as an uprooted and exploited people. Gradually, I saw how, through every trial, Delta blacks had been buoyed up and propelled forward by the nourishing river of black cultural practice, maintained in the isolation of the Southern ghetto. Like cunning Br'er Rabbit, the African-American creative tradition was "bred and born in the briar patch" created by Jim Crow. A flood tide of supportive African sociability, eroticism, and life-giving laughter, welling up in black family and community life, endowed black life with a certain invulnerability in the face of sharp adversity. Our studies established solid connections between the modes of every day and the characteristics of song and dance styles. For example, these wider investigations showed that the ability to sing in good concert, and to dramatize strong feelings in dance, were present wherever cultural conditions constantly brought black people together for sociable activities. The large extended families, the neighborhood self-help groups, and the community-led religious services of the blacks provided such sociable occasions and fostered ease in morale-building group performances. Therefore, it could be argued that the new song styles of the Delta symbolized the dynamic continuance of African social and creative process as a technique of adaptation. Moreover, the birth of the blues and the struggles of its progenitors could be seen as a creative deployment of African style in an American setting, the operation of African temperament in new surroundings. In a sense, African-American singers and dancers made an aesthetic conquest of their environment in the New World. Their productions transfixed audiences, and white performers rushed to imitate and parody them in the minstrel show, buck… outcaste people, who were unfairly denied the rewards of an economy they had helped to build. One black response to this ironic fact was to create the blues—the first satirical song form in the English language—mounted on cadences that have now seduced the world. It is heartening to realize that both the style and the inner content of this new genre are bold symbols of an independent and irrepressible culture. The experience of Southern working-class blacks, who created the blues in the postslavery period, was in some ways more bitter than slavery itself. Promised equal rights and opportunities, blacks were, by and large, denied both. They put their hand to the plow, to the railroad hammer, to the lines of the mule team and, in effect, built the South—for subsistence wages. Faulkner's decadent planter class knew how to exploit them and, when they felt it necessary, resorted to the most savage exemplary violence to keep these vigorous and ambitious people in line. As always, such cynical violence imposed from the top led to violence within the exploited group—a very ugly emotional safety valve. These conditions—described in the following pages—continued, especially in the Deep South, with little change until World War II, and, even after the Johnson political reforms and the inspiring successes of the integration movement, have not entirely disappeared. Thus they form the immediate background for our present. The Delta scene was, perhaps, more savage than that in some other parts of the South because it was a sort of industrial frontier. Yet it is fair to say that the grandparents, even the parents, of the majority of American blacks were painfully acquainted with the lifestyle described in these pages. Now that people everywhere begin to taste the bitterness of the postindustrial period, the Delta blues have found a world audience.
February 15, 2026 at 9:45 PM
pat.northsky.social
So true queen
Disputed • To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable • Not found in Beethoven's known works. It may be a summary of the following description of Beethoven from his piano pupil Ferdinand Ries: "When I left out something in a passage, a note or a skip, which in many cases he wished to have specially emphasized, or struck a wrong key, he seldom said anything; yet when I was at fault with regard to the expression, the crescendo or matters of that kind, or in the character of the piece, he would grow angry. Mistakes of the other kind, he said were due to chance; but these last resulted from want of knowledge, feeling or attention. He himself often made mistakes of the first kind, even playing in public."
February 13, 2026 at 6:57 AM
pat.northsky.social
The preceding paragraph has indicated the coherence of the preceding five chapters. But there is another striking and characteristic action of Dionysos in myth. When people resist the introduction of his cult, he inspires them into a frenzy in which they kill their own kin (e.g. the daughters of Minyas, Lykourgos), and the cult is established. This sequence was dramatised in Euripides' Bacchae, probably also in Aeschylus' Edonians. The self-destruction (albeit inspired by Dionysos) of the autocratic family leads to cult for the whole community. The pattern frequently occurs, albeit without the presence of Dionysos, in tragedy (although both elements of it are alien to Homer). To take just two examples: in Euripides' Hippolytus Theseus is responsible for the death of his son Hippolytus, whose cult in Trozen is predicted by Artemis at the end of the play. And in his Herakles, Herakles in a frenzy kills his own children, and on regaining sanity is finally led away to Athens where he will receive hero-cult celebrated by the whole polis (1332-3). This pattern of action originated, I suggest, in the Dionysiac themes—in which it is most at home—of the earliest tragedies: Dionysos, god of frenzy and community, inspired kin-killing and founded communal cult. The pattern was then transmitted to subsequent tragedies in which Dionysos himself does not appear. This hypothesis is supported by another characteristic of tragedy. Even in plays in which Dionysos does not appear, he may be evoked for his association with our pattern. For instance in Euripides' Herakles, Herakles is put into a frenzy by Hera and kills his own children, and the frenzy is several times described in Dionysiac terms. Indeed the use of Dionysiac terms for kin-killing frenzy is not infrequent in tragedy, as when—to give another example—Klytaimestra is in Aeschylus' Agamemnon called (by an almost certain emendation) 'a raving maenad of Hades, breathing truceless war against her kin; how she raised a shriek of triumph, all-daring, as if at the turn of battle' (compare the warrior maenads of Bacchae). Although it was not Dionysos who made Klytaimestra kill her husband, we feel that 'maenad' here may be more than a mere metaphor.
February 1, 2026 at 5:23 AM
pat.northsky.social
Got some new books
The Intermediaries — Brandy Schillace I.N.L.A. Deadly Divisions — Henry McDonald & Jack Holland
February 1, 2026 at 3:43 AM
pat.northsky.social
$1600/mo for a 4-bedroom house in the east village...
STAR began renting STAR House, which was located at 213 East 2nd Street, in November 1970. The four-bedroom house was in poor condition, with no electricity or heat, inadequate plumbing, and piles of rubble littered across the premises. Andorra, Lee, Rivera, and Bambi L'Amour worked to restore the house together. While the GAA and GLF initially agreed to support their efforts, only one activist, Bob Kohler of the GLF, actually did so. The mafia set rent for the house at $200 (equivalent to roughly $1,600 in 2024), and STAR members used various approaches to raise money.
January 25, 2026 at 10:33 PM
pat.northsky.social
We are all sidemen to the music
There was no intention to be a working band. But if you find the right guys and the magic happens, then, well: Let's play a gig. Not in a concert hall, but in a club, because "All The Things You Are" in a concert seems wrong. But maybe the magic deepens so you try a small hall in Japan, then finally major halls everywhere. And you feel freer and freer within this context. If you decide to be like peanut butter and spread yourself all over the place, you might never have the experience of what happens next with those same guys. In 30 years we never had an argument about music. We never had a dispute of any major consequence. We just show up and play. One of the concepts, if not the basic concept, is that we are all sidemen to the music. What do we mean when we speak of rhythm in Nature, Art, and in Music? We mean some intrinsic quality common to all three, a quality that can be instinctively felt, but which is practically indefinable. It is not Time. Time is only the duration of rhythm. It is not Metre. Metre is only its measurement. Rhythm is that ceaseless, ever-varying movement of an intangible force interwoven with all that can be comprised in the word 'LIFE' In it is contained the flux and reflux, and the make and break of things; but if this were all, then the effort of earth in the ebb and flow of seasons and other rhythmic functions would be the labour of Sisyphus, only undoing what it has done. Even machines are not used merely to show that they can move to and fro, for, on the material plane alone, they have a purpose. The beat of the machine is not the sole reason for its existence. From its shuttle-beat wonders of creation emerge, shaped from a chaos of threads into a patterned texture, useful or beautiful in the service of humanity. So rhythm is no mere pendulum to fall back under momentum to its original place. Rhythm stretches out like an incoming wave of the sea, and after its fierce force is spent it falls back again into the great limbo of waters, as if it had never been; but, in the meantime, there has been a moment of fruition and of arrestation. It has paused to fulfil its purpose and has borne on its high crest a treasure that now lies safely on the shore. As with the machine, this is not achieved with one pulsation. But, laboriously and eventually, atom by atom, thread by thread, layer by layer, the garment of beauty is woven; the pearl of great price is matured. Thus rhythm is threefold in its sequence of effort, fruition, rest. But we can begin to understand something about rhythm only by studying its inherent laws, their attributes and manifestations. Let us go back to the source of rhythm which exists in nature, and to that part of its physical expression which galvanizes… The body is a living and vital organism, rhythmic in its laws, and moving in time and space in a world which itself has a vast and cosmic rhythm. Illness and disease come to individuals when their rhythms have been deranged, and wars, famines, earthquakes, and pestilences result from the disturbance of the wider system of rhythms governing the world. If we begin to study the natural rhythms of the body, we find that each is based on a movement of contraction, followed and balanced by a movement of relaxation. Many of the rhythms of the body work continuously and recurrently without our volition. Instances of these are the digestive processes, the systole and diastole of the heart's action, and the inhalation and exhalation that together make breathing. In contrast to these, all dynamic bodily movements of the voluntary kind can be observed, felt, and controlled. A simple instance is the action of walking, in which the weight of the body is transferred trom one foot to the other, making each alternately heavy and light, as contraction and relaxation occur. Let us study actual movements in which we can see the laws of rhythm in action. Labourers, athletes, craftsmen, and acrobats master and use the force of rhythm for their specialized purposes. Their mastery of rhythm results in movements graceful and beautiful in their economy of ettort, while full, also, of purpose and technical skill. Rhythm seems to galvanize all according to their peculiarity, manifesting itself chameleon-like, giving the power to take colour, and to make movement wherever it finds a resting-place. It would follow that it makes for individuality, bringing out the intrinsic differences of all growths and individuals in whom it rests. It is these intrinsic differences and shades of differences which alone can give variety to life, for, without them, we should be a monotonous regiment as dull and deadened in expression as if ordered by a drill-sergeant. A nation of such sheep would be unlikely to a…
January 22, 2026 at 6:17 AM
pat.northsky.social
Hm
Etymology of the word "person" Middle English: from Old French persone, from Latin persona 'actor's mask, character in a play', later 'human being'.
January 18, 2026 at 7:27 PM
pat.northsky.social
If nobody got me I know The WAM Book got me Can i get an AMEN?
January 16, 2026 at 8:40 PM
pat.northsky.social
Hm
In mythology In Ancient Greek mythology, Prometheus gave mortals fire by hiding it in the plant's hollow stalk. Additionally, during the Classical period, a staff fashioned from Ferula communis called a Thyrsus or thyrsos was carried by the devotees of Dionysus and used in Hellenic festivals and religious ceremonies. Ferutinin is a sesquiterpene, extracted from the roots, the leaves and the rhizome. Different mechanisms by which several compounds, isolated from many species of Ferula L., exert their inhibitory activity on cell growth are known. Among the compounds isolated from many species of Ferula, ferutinin obtained from the plants Ferula ovina Boiss., Ferula communis L., Ferula hermonis Boiss., and other species of Ferula, is known for the different activities that, in a dose-dependent way, performs both in vitro and in vivo. In particular, ferutinin has shown estrogenic, anti-inflammatory, antiproliferative, cytotoxic, antifungal and antimicrobial activities; the cytotoxic activity represents the pivotal role of its action that should leads to the use of this molecule in anti-neoplastic therapy. In vitro, the ferutinin binding affinity shows an inversion compared to other phytoestrogens since it has a greater affinity for estrogenic receptor ERa than for ERB; the in vivo phytoestrogenic activity confirms this binding specificity as, at the hypothalamic level, it has been observed a modulated expression of the ERa receptor. It has been observed that ferutinin, when administered alone, increases the expression of ERa, while, when co-administered concomitantly with estradiol, decreases its expression. Additional evidence demonstrated that ferutinin exerts an action comparable to estradiol benzoate, stimulating the endometrial proliferation. Moreover, ferutinin, dissimilar to estrogens, is able to increase the apoptotic index in luminal and glandular epithelia, avoiding the consequent stimulation of excessive cell proliferation leading to endometrial cancer. This represents an important goal because it might overcome the main risks related to the HRT. In vivo studies also shown that ferutinin prevents osteoporosis and exhibits dose-dependent osteoprotective effects. Indeed, different doses of ferutinin exerted an important activity on bone remodelling in rats ovariectomized which reflects the effects of estrogen deficiency in menopause women. In these experimental works the histomorphometric analysis of cortical bone of femoral diaphysis and of vertebral bodies, specifically the trabecular bone of lumen vertebrae and distal femoral epiphysis has been performed. The data obtained showed that the ovariectomized rats orally treated with ferutinin (2 mg/Kg/day for 60 days) showed the same bone mass values of ovariectomized rats treated with estradiol benzoate
January 16, 2026 at 7:05 PM
pat.northsky.social
Logging onto bluesky for the first time in days
Community meme of Troy bringing pizza back to the apartment only to find it on fire. Big Tiddy Isabelle is standing in the middle of the flames
January 7, 2026 at 12:04 AM
pat.northsky.social
Anyway,,,
Trans Labrys Flag
December 18, 2025 at 10:45 AM
pat.northsky.social
It is certain that if Pentheus, a transparent and unequivocal name with the somber meaning "man of suffering," could become a man's name at Knossos it was only because the names of gods—"Zagreus" as well as "Pentheus"—were also given to persons and because in the festive calendar the god's somber aspect prepared the way for the opposite aspect. In Thebes there were deeper reasons for the same name. The inherent dialectic of the cult, whose sacrificial offering the god himself voluntarily became, made "Pentheus" into the name of a punished enemy of god, who nevertheless in his suffering remained so close to the god as to represent him. The contradictory nature of the tragic fate of a god who suffers and lets himself be killed—a god whose servant, indeed he himself, was the sacrificial ax—was embodied in a man who destroyed himself, a frequent character in later Attic tragedy. Subsequently, Pentheus allows himself to be dressed in female clothes, as a maenad: this, in my view, reflects the gender-reversal characteristic of rites of passage. The effeminacy and transvestism of Dionysos is manifest in various texts from the fifth century BC (Bacchae 353; Aeschylus fragment 61) to the sixth century AD (Lydus De Mensibus 160) as well as in epithets and visual representations. It is — in part at least — a projection of the practice of transvestism in his ritual. He himself receives a garment from Rhea on being initiated into her mysteries (Apollodorus Bibl. 3.5.1). Like the dismemberment, the mirror too is deployed to express philosophical ideas. This remarkable deployment was possible because, whatever precisely the use of the mirror in the ritual, it is likely to have included the idea that the mirror provides access to a mysterious other identity of the initiand. Painted on an Apulian bell-krater in Zurich is a young man (about to be struck by a maenad with a sword) looking at a reflection of himself that is nevertheless of a maenad (i.e. female!). In Euripides a doomed bride laughs at the 'lifeless image of her body' in a mirror (Medea 1162). The association of the mirror image with death or with the soul is found in numerous cultures. Apollodorus Grammaticus maintained that souls were 'like images appearing in mirrors' (Stobaeus Florilegium 1.49). In the sixth century AD the neoplatonist Olympiodorus wrote that 'Dionysos, when he put his image into the mirror, followed it, and in this way was divided up into the universe.' The dismemberment myth may signify not only the relationship between unity and plurality in the mind, but also the failure of our minds to realise unity. It may function like a myth of original sin. Already in the third century AD Plotinus had noted the power of a mirror to 'seize a form', and a few lines later writes that 'the souls of men, having seen their images, like Dionysos (had seen his) in a mirror, became there (i.e. in the images) by leaping from above, but not cut off from their own principle and intellect (nous)' (Enneads 4.3.12).
December 18, 2025 at 10:45 AM
pat.northsky.social
It's honestly making me kinda emotional you're so beloved wow
lol ive met it a few times shes cool asf She was my neighbor and best friend growing up. Shes honestly a sweetheart and I'm about to go to war for it's honor I wanna take it to house shows ahhhh yeah I met it once and she was really nice and fun to talk to!! the conservatives are just mad they can't be that cool Same Sky is very chill and cool.
December 14, 2025 at 8:15 PM
pat.northsky.social
They're very respectful of your lesbianism
December 13, 2025 at 7:05 PM
pat.northsky.social
Waow
December 8, 2025 at 8:10 PM
pat.northsky.social
The way there's like zero overlap between "people who genuinely care about me", "people who want to fuck me" and "people I could easily get in the same room with"
Spongebob internal screaming meme
November 25, 2025 at 11:30 PM
pat.northsky.social
"Pure evil" sounds about right yeah
Stanton states that, "Rarely has such a strange and little-understood organization had such a profound effect on media coverage of such a controversial matter." A study showed that in 1991 prior to the group's foundation, of the stories about abuse in several popular press outlets "more than 80 percent of the coverage was weighted toward stories of survivors, with recovered memory taken for granted and questionable therapy virtually ignored" but that three years later "more than 80 percent of the coverage focused on false accusations, often involving supposedly false memory" which the author of the study, Katherine Beckett, attributed to FMSF. [8]
November 16, 2025 at 10:52 PM
pat.northsky.social
Oh so this has been a known thing for at least 6 years 🙂
r/CPTSD 6y ago [deleted] PSA: Wikipedia page on "Repressed Memory" Is it just me, or does the Wikipedia page on "Repressed Memory" seem to be extremely biased? I realize the subject is controversial, and that it might be appropriate for the content to lean to the more conservative side, but I can't help but feel a lot of new research is left out. I do realize anyone can edit this page, and when I am in a better place I will do that. But since this issue affects a lot of us, and since some of you may have a better handle on all the research, I thought it was worth mentioning. Honestly, I feel like a lot of people probably go to that page looking for help, but probably end up disappointing because the bias leads it to be about as invalidating as it possibly could be! hermit_dragon 6y ago The FMS Foundation is pure evil and thier propaganda gets everywhere it's sooooo upsetting : (
November 16, 2025 at 10:52 PM
pat.northsky.social
Thank you for fighting the good fight NpsychC 🫡
Up to date research removed Why has the up to date research I added to this page been deleted? Much of the research on this page relies heavily on the research of Loftus and McNally which is no longer current and there is a plethora of new information available. It seems that this is being removed. The article also states that Clinical Psychologists have stopped using the term repressed or recovered memories, which is only true in the sense dissociative amnesia would now be used. The article reads however, that the terms are debunked which is simply not true. Even the summary relies on information from 1998 - over 25 years ago! In my opinion, this whole paragraph needs to go. It is based on a letter that was sent to a court. What kind of evidence base is this? There is so much more up to date information about dissociative amnesia that the way the first three paragraphs were reading was spreading medical disinformation
November 16, 2025 at 9:04 PM
pat.northsky.social
ⓘ Users added context:

This is what gaslighting pedophiles say
Subsequent accusations based on such "recovered memories" led to substantial harm of individuals implicated as perpetrators, sometimes resulting in false convictions and years' incarceration.
November 16, 2025 at 9:04 PM
pat.northsky.social
Not many people know this but nouns are actually just higher-order verbs that apply a verb over a signified object
If John has a type that combines with the type of left to form a complex expression of type t, then presumably everyone must also have a type that combines with the type of left to produce an expression of type t. Since we want to avoid giving everyone the type e, the next simplest type that will serve is (e→t)→t. This is in fact the main insight proposed by Montague (8): that noun phrases such as everyone and no one can have the type (e→t)→t, which he called a generalized quantifier (for reasons I won't discuss here). Intuitively, what this analysis says is that everyone is a function mapping a verb phrase to a truth value. This naive solution works out fine for the example Everyone left (although it has the rather disturbing effect of reversing the direction of functional application, a point I'll return to shortly). But if we attempt to place a quantificational expression in some other position where a proper name can occur (i.e., instead of John saw Mary we have John saw everyone, as in the diagram on the right of (6)), the solution breaks down: the generalized quantifier type (e→t)→t does not suffice, and we seem to need a yet higher type. This is the point at which continuations enter the picture. Consider again the diagrams in (5) from the point of view of continuations. What is the continuation of the expression John relative to the sentence John left? It will be a function mapping individuals into truth values, i.e., a function of type e→t. Not coincidentally, this happens to also be the type of the verb phrase left. From this perspective, the proposed generalized quantifier type for everyone, (e→t)→t, is a function from its continuation (type e→t) to a truth value. Now we can understand better how to deal with the situation depicted in (6). What is the continuation of everyone in the sentence John saw everyone? Well, once again it will be a function mapping individuals to truth values. More specifically, it will be the function mapping each individual x to…
November 15, 2025 at 8:40 PM
pat.northsky.social
My gf just picked this up, flipped to a random page, gave me a baffled look and started asking "Is this a schizotext? Was the person who wrote this insane??"
The Logical Syntax of Language by Rudolf Carnap
November 15, 2025 at 2:48 AM
pat.northsky.social
Living in Eternal 186BC 🙃
The harsh suppression of the Bacchic cult in Italy by a decree I of the Roman Senate in 186 B.C.E. (senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus) prompted Burkert to observe that in the degree of its cruelty—over six thousand executions—"there is nothing comparable in religious history before the persecutions of Christians." Besides the senatus consultum there is Livy's dramatic and engaging account. It is this narrative that brought support to the notion that women must have made up the most influential group within the cultic organization. After Postumius had informed his colleagues, a senatorial inquiry was launched and the Senate passed a decree. Before addressing the people, Livy has Postumius recite a prayer. Thus the historian sets the tone of Postumius' public speech: ancestral gods were pitched against new and debauched ones. ("It is a prayer that reminds us that these are the gods whom your ancestors ordained to worship, to venerate, to entreat, not those gods... who would drive on every sort of crime and desire.") Describing the thousands of worshippers, Postumius tells his audience that "a great number are women, and they are the source of this evil; next there are men most like women." Hence Livy invokes and reinforces the paradigm of the evil, cunning woman so prominent in his first Pentade. "The impious conspiracy still holds itself to private crimes, it is not yet strong enough to overthrow the state," argues Postumius, "but this evil grows and crawls every day." Livy's Postumius continues to argue that "nothing is more treacherous in appearance than perverse religion... when the whole discipline of sacrificing, apart from the Roman tradition, is destroyed". Beard, North, and Price put forth the argument that this cult "was based on a highly structured group basis (unfamiliar to the Roman authorities), which, in turn, was genuinely seen as threatening to the social order," and this "threat the Senate wished above all to destroy." Indeed, this senatorial decree must have "tested the loyalty of the allies to the very limit," for Rome meddled in her allies' internal affairs. Even if the internal group structures had been known to the Roman authorities—after all they had had reciprocal contact with their Italian neighbors for centuries—Rome was for the first time in a political position to dictate successfully its religious/cultural terms. It had come into its own; M. Porcius Cato had made sure of this. Roman tradition, which included the higher magistrates' integral role in state cults (e.g… In Livy's narrative, the cult of Bacchus represents disorder and madness while the state represented by the (all male) Senate stands for order and sanity. The account stresses moral and even sexual debaucheries committed by Bacchants. If we had only Livy's narrative we would conclude that the Roman Senate feared and reacted against the cult for the same reasons as Euripides' Pentheus. The inscription from Tiriolo, however, points to a political reason: the Senate wanted control over the cult and demonstrated its political power over all of Italy. In Rome, where politics and religion were intertwined, such control belonged traditionally to the ruling elite and in the case of Bacchic worship senatorial control over the cult needed to be established. There was a desire to curb Hellenistic influences on public life, a zeal to subdue, bring into line, and structure a "foreign" cult. Or, in terms of power, Rome reigned supreme over her immediate neighbors and allies. The high number of executions leaves me with the feeling, though, that in 186 B.C.E., as it happens too often in human history, religion served as a smoke-screen. That those who were singled out for undermining the ruling authority, Rome, were executed not for their participation in a cult but so that a political order could prevail.
November 11, 2025 at 2:18 AM
pat.northsky.social
I'm imagining..
A stick figure lying in bed blushing and surrounded by hearts with a thought bubble that says "giving away feet for free"
November 2, 2025 at 9:45 PM
pat.northsky.social
BOUPHONIA: (June-July) "Voice (or sound) of the bull." This festival was a large-scale ox sacrifice, ostensibly a remembrance of the original act of homage from Athena to her father, Zeus, in thanks for her panoply. The literal translation of this festival's name implies that oracles may have been taken from the sounds the bulls made at the time of their sacrifice. The simplicity and straightforwardness of this portion of the Panathenaia suggests that it springs from archaic roots - perhaps a paleolithic rite honoring the Animal Master who brings food, to which mankind must make restitution via a "sacred king." In the Bouphonia ceremony of Classical Athens, a sacred king was indeed honored; the mythic Erectheus, "the earth-born one" - an epiphany of Dionysos, the Indestructible, who was also honored in the Pandaia ceremony. Well before the Classical Hellenic period, animals were considered perfectly acceptable surrogates for human sacrifice, hence the equation of the wholly anthropomorphic gods of Classical Greece with particular sacrificial animals. At the end of the Bouphonia, a peculiar ritual was publicly held by the priestesses of Athena and the priests of Erectheus. Aristophanes relates this ceremony in The Clouds, a rite known to scholars of ancient religions as "the comedy of innocence," in which all those who must kill to eat attempt to lay the guilt for the killing upon one another until, finally, it is adjudicated that the true culprit of the crime must be the weapon with which the animal was killed. In the Bouphonia ceremony of Athena and Erectheus, the sacrificial weapon used for slaughtering the bulls was punished by being cast into the sea. According to Diodorus Siculus (IV: 14), the rites of Agrai were developed as a form of divine restitution which would cleanse Heracles of his murderer's taint, since his desire was to be received at Eleusis, and no person guilty of unabsolved murder could receive the visionary blessings bestowed at the Eleusinia: "Demeter instituted the Lesser Mysteries in honor of Heracles, that she might purify him of the guilt he had incurred in the slaughter of the centaurs." Since all individuals were required to undergo the purificatory rites of the lesser Mysteries before seeking admission to the greater, it may be inferred that "murder," in the sense meant by the Mysteries, included the killing of animals for food. Such a conception is part and parcel of human consciousness, and ritual forms are created by all societies in order to attempt to assuage the guilt inherent in killing to eat, as well as the fear of our own deaths — a knowledge eternally intertwined with eating guilt. Such awareness was displayed by the Pagan Greeks in their New Year's rite of Bouphonia, but it reached a spiritual sin qua non within the lesser and greater Mystery ceremonies.
October 17, 2025 at 8:42 PM