Janus, the "God of Beginnings," with one face looking backward and one looking forward, serves as an image of the paradoxical theme for the New Year musical essay, "The New Year & Rebirth In Archaic Myth & Ritual": in order to move forward, one must go backward.
The Gypsy Scholar announces his New Year Orphic Essay-with-Soundtrack series:
The New Year & Rebirth in Archaic Myth & Ritual 2016
Babylonian New Year ritual (with Ishtar)
Thematic Images for Sacred (pre-modern) vs. Profane (modern) New Year Ritual
Babylonian Akitu Festival
Babylonian Akitu Festival
"Bacchanal of the Andrians"
"La Jeunesse de Bacchus"
Dionysus festival of Ambrosia-wine (Greek vase 4th c. BCE)
Thematic Images for New Year Celebrations Around the World
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Chinese New Year mandala
Thematic Images for New Year Celebrations of Indian Tribes
For info on Native American New Year Commemorations, click here
In archaic or ancient myth and ritual, the celebration of the New Year meant REBIRTH -- for the sun and sun-gods, for nature, for the tribe or society, and for all human beings. It still does for traditional societies -- and it still can be for modern ones. The concept of "rebirth" is an archetypal motif that applies to various levels of meaning; a common metaphor or literal event in myth and religion, in the "hero’s journey" in mythology, poetry, and romance, and even in the process of human creativity. Thus, even today, at this time in the cycle of the season, our contemporary New Year's celebrations still contain, however secularized and profaned, vestiges of the perennial need of humankind to suspend the flow of time and regenerate the mythic "time of beginnings" (in illo tempore ab origine); in other words, to make all things new -- "to be born again." (See images of Rebirth below.)
The Broken Egg Symbolism of Rebirth
In a Buddhist text, the Suttavibhanga, the Buddha draws an analogy to the Enlightened One bursting the shell of ignorance with a chick breaking out of the egg. The laying of the egg is likened to the "first birth;" i.e., the natural birth of man. The hatching out corresponded to the supernatural birth of initiation, or "second birth." It should be noted that Brahmanic initiation was regarded as a second birth. Furthermore, on the cosmic plane the supernatural birth of the Buddha is analogous to the breaking of the egg containing in germ the "firstborn" of the universe, which also has its origin in the "cosmic egg" of Brahmanic traditions, whence at the dawn of time there issued the primordial god of creation, variously named the "Golden Embryo", the "Father or Master of Creatures, " or "Agni." This, of course, is a variant of Prof. Eliade's "archaic cosmogony."
Thematic Images of Rebirth
"Rebirth"
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"Rebirth"
Uterine and Thalassal Regression
In many of the major ancient civilizations, from the Mesopotamian to the Roman, their solar mythos meant that the concept of Rebirth was associated with the return of the Sun at or around the time of the Winter Solstice, which also marked the beginning of the New Year.
Thematic Images for Re-Inventing Yourself
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And in the Tower of Song re-birth or re-invention comes from re-discovering the "lost song" in one's soul.
Thematic Images for New Year's "New Beginnings"
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Thematic Images for the Shaman's World Tree (Axis Mundi)
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Thematic Images of the Hierogamy: Orgiastic & Tantric Sexuality
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The New Year & Rebirth: the Hierogamy
And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy and one will not be out of the other’s sight even for a moment. –Plato, The Symposium
Marriage is no marriage that is not linked up with the sun and the earth, the moon and the fixed stars and the planets. Marriage is no marriage that is not a correspondence of blood … a communion of the two bloodstreams. –D.H. Lawrence
Man only repeats the act of the Creation; his religious calendar commemorates, in the space of a year, all the cosmogonic phases which took place ab origine [from the origin]. In fact, the sacred year ceaselessly repeats the Creation; man is contemporary with the cosmogony and with the anthropogony because ritual projects him into the mythical epoch of the beginning — of the illud tempus, or "those days."
… this reproduction [in ritual] made him contemporary with the mythical moment of the beginning of the world and he felt the need of returning to that moment as often as possible in order to annul profane time and its burden of memory and guilt; in other words, to regenerate herself or himself and the fallen world. . . . . The creation of the world, which took place, in illud tempore, at the beginning of the year, is thus reactualized each year. The hierogamy [the cosmic union of heaven and earth, male and female] is a concrete realization of the “rebirth” of the world and man. –Mircea Eliade Around 2000 BCE, the Babylonian New Year began with the first New Moon (actually the first visible crescent) after the Vernal Equinox (first day of spring). The festival observed the annual rebirth of the god of fertility, who was known as Tammuz in Babylon, the embodiment of rebirth in nature and son/consort of the goddess Ishtar. Their sacred marriage (hierogamy or hieros gamos) symbolized the cosmic union of heaven and earth, male and female, as a concrete realization of the “rebirth” of the world and man.
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T H EARC HAICREVIV A L
Prof Mircea Eliade identifies the primary ontological trait of archaic peoples as a "nostalgia for beginnings." The GS argues that we have not altogether lost this kind of "nostalgia." It is manifesting today in the form of a longing for our own pre-historic cultural beginnings--"nostalgia for the lost archaic." To see what the GS means by "The Archaic Revival" and its "nostalgia for the lost archaic," click on image above.
A glossary of the major terms used pertaining to the archaic world-view.
Cosmological has to do with the universe, its structure. Cosmogony is a mythic model of the origin and evolution of the universe. Ontological pertains to that which is real, that which exists. Ontology is a mythic model of the nature and relations of being. Anthropogony is the model of the origin and development of man. Eschatology (lit. "study of the last") is a part of theology and philosophy concerned with what are believed to be the final events in history, or the ultimate destiny of humanity; "the end of the world." Eschatological relates to or deals with the ultimate destiny of mankind and the world. Eschato-cosmological refers to the cosmology of the end of time Hierophany (from the Greek roots hieros, meaning “sacred” and phainein, meaning “to reveal” or “to bring to light,” as in our word epiphany) means a manifestation or breakthrough of the sacred into the world. In the hierophanies recorded in archaic and ancient myth, the sacred appears in the form of ideal models, or “archetypes” i.e., the actions of gods, heroes, ancestors, etc. Telluric refers to terrestrial; pertaining to earth. Archetype, as used in this essay, is simply a synonym for “exemplary model” or “paradigm,” because archetypes are models for institutions, norms, and various categories of behavior believed to have been “revealed” at the beginning of time, regarded as having a superhuman and “transcendental” origin.) By manifesting itself as ideal models, the sacred gives the world value, direction, and purpose.
Latin terms ab origine = from the origin. in illo tempore = at the beginning. in illo tempore, ab origine = the time of the beginning; the "great time" before history; mythic, transcendent time; "once upon a time." illud tempus = a mythical time before time; (lit. "those days"). incipit vita nova = beginning of new life; rejuvenation of life itself. fons et origio = the source and origin; primary cause.
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