Daily Archives: April 9, 2024

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mancy (2) Necromancy

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Free “divine gallery” art sample – OldWorldGods

 

(2) NECROMANCY

 

Dead men do tell tales!

That’s right – it’s the mancy everyone knows, virtually synonymous with evil and death or the undead in popular culture, hence its high ranking although I refuse to give it top spot.

For example, Sauron styles himself as the Necromancer in The Hobbit, although he doesn’t seem to do much actual necromancy – he probably would have done better with armies of the undead in The Lord of The Rings. Of course, he was also a vampire AND a werewolf at various points, because the First Age was trippy.

Necromancy has a far older literary pedigree – indeed the oldest, at least for the two sources of Western literary culture, the Bible and the epics of Homer, albeit the Odyssey rather than the Iliad.

The Bible has the Witch of Endor, whom Saul consults to raise the prophet Samuel from the dead. Interestingly, it is presented as working, although both Samuel and God seem pissed about it. It could also be argued to present with the same deception or trickery as a séance.

The Odyssey has the archetypal journey into the underworld by its protagonist to consult the shade of the prophet Tiresias, with the nice necromantic component of pouring out sacrificial blood to attract the dead – also perhaps demonstrating the substantial overlap with hieromancy and blood magic from the previous entry.

Interestingly, in both cases, while the necromancy involved raising or summoning the dead person, but the actual divination or prophecy part did not originate from them being dead, but that they had been prophets in life. Although Odysseus’ dead mother also has useful information for him – and I have read (and prefer) adaptations that extend the divination to other shades.

Necromancy has a pedigree older than literature or writing, as its inclusion in the Odyssey, originally an oral epic, suggests. Indeed it has probably the oldest, likely one of the first methods of divination in history or prehistory – originating from when humans first associated death or the dead with a mystical or supernatural realm, from which one could see things not seen by the living.

Strictly speaking, necromancy is defined not as the hardcore zombie apocalypse type of necromancy we see in popular culture, but only calling on or communicating with the dead for divination – divining things beyond the knowledge of the living, whether past, present or future. After all, the dead reside in eternity as opposed to time.

As such, it was not necessarily evil in origin – indeed, quite the contrary, seeking out or summoning the spirits of ancestors or dead heroes for guidance. To the extent that it extended beyond communing with ancestors or heroes, it probably involved positive aspects of keeping balance between life and death, or with the spirit realm or souls, for purposes such as healing.

“But since that’s not nearly as interesting as zombies”, necromancy in popular imagination and culture is, as I said, virtually synonymous with evil and death, or rather, the undead – the ultimate crossing lines that were not meant to be crossed between life and death, animating or controlling the dead (or generally playing with dead things).

“The career of necromancer is an excellent choice for evil-doers who are not a ‘people person’. Though some might say there is not much point to turning the earth into one gigantic graveyard, these people are fools and will never understand anyway. Good career entry points for becoming a necromancer include occultists, dabblers in voodoo, grave diggers, morticians, possessed eight-year-old girls, and inheritors of scary books wrapped in human flesh.”
— Neil Zawacki, How to be a Villain

As TV Tropes points out, necromancy commonly overlaps with the trope of necromantic (a pun of necromancy and romance) – bringing back a loved one lost to death. Also, “it’s not unheard of for a necromancer to be one of the undead themselves, often a lich. Even if they aren’t liches or other forms of undead themselves, they are likely to have unlocked other ways of prolonging their own lives to unnatural lengths. Furthermore, they may become partially undead.”

As a means of divination, it’s up there with the original and the best, the dead perhaps being second only to the divine or infernal (and often overlapping with those) in secret knowledge. Speaking of infernal, necromancy definitely overlaps with the more rarely used necyomancy (or divination by summoning damned souls) or demonomancy (or divination by demons).

As a school of magic, it is similarly one of the most powerful, if distasteful. It was notoriously overpowered in Dungeons and Dragons, such that opting out of it was effectively nerfing your wizard – although ironically the class of cleric made for better necromancers than wizards, which certainly makes me think differently of the average priest.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
GOD-TIER (OR IS THAT DEVIL-TIER – OR DEATH-TIER?)

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Mythologies (2) Classical

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Free “divine gallery” art sample – OldWorldGods

 

(2) CLASSICAL

 

“What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy!”

I believe in all the gods – especially the goddesses!

And I’m into classical mythology for the nymphs.

Or pining for them. As I said for Egyptian mythology, if there’s one of two things I lament about Christianity, it’s the decline of the Egyptian pantheon. Of course, the other thing – indeed the foremost – is the decline of classical paganism. It’s all I can do to stop myself yelling “This isn’t over! Pan isn’t dead! Julian the Apostate was right!” in churches.

“What ailed us, O gods, to desert you
For creeds that refuse and restrain?
Come down and redeem us from virtue”

If only we continued to follow the gods of classical paganism! If there is any mythology that tempts to me to actual religion within the deepest levels of my psyche, it’s classical mythology. I can see myself as a devotee of Aphrodite or Dionysus.

Classical mythology is of course the combination of Greek mythology and Roman mythology in ancient Greece as well as the Roman Republic and Roman Empire. Even as mythology rather than religion, it is one of the major survivals of ‘Greco-Roman’ culture that in turn is one of the two predominant cultural influences in what is often termed as Western civilization. Of course, many devotees prefer to refer to it simply as Greek mythology, seeing Roman mythology as Greek mythology with the serial numbers filed off. Which is somewhat ironic, as prior to the so-called Greek revival of the nineteenth century, Europeans primarily referred to names from classical mythology in their Latinized form. It is also a little unfair, as Roman mythology was not entirely derivative of Greek mythology – more a continuity reboot in the words of TV Tropes.

Anyway, you know it – or should. The gods and goddesses, primarily the twelve Olympian gods, but all the other deities as well as the demi-semi-hemi-gods that pop up because the gods can’t keep it in their pants. There are the heroes – a concept that in its very name actually comes from Greek mythology – primarily the heroes of the Trojan cycle. And there’s all the other beings, notably the various monsters that represent all the chaotic or chthonic forces in classical mythology.

And of course there’s the nymphs…

 

SACRED SPACE & CHTHONIC BLUES

 

What it lacks in the same extent of mythic cosmology as the Nine Worlds of Norse mythology, classical mythology more than makes up in the enduring iconic nature of its mythic geography.

I say geography, because the mythic geography or sacred space of classical mythology tended to be actual locations in historical geography, particularly within Greece, albeit transformed with a heroic or numinous nature. Troy is perhaps the most famous such location, although both its location and historicity remained uncertain before its modern rediscovery.

Even the realm of the gods had its portal in the historical geography of Greece with Mount Olympus.

Best of all, you have classical mythology’s recurring tendency to populate virtually every geographic feature with a hot nymph – now that’s sacred space!

As for chthonic blues, there’s the enduring iconic nature of classical mythology’s underworld – with most of its features being adapted wholesale by its successor for most prevalent imagery of the underworld in Western culture and imagination.

 

APOCALYPSE HOW

 

In contrast to its sacred space and chthonic blues second to my mythology in top spot, classical mythology is the least apocalyptic mythology in my top ten. Apocalyptic eschatology is not entirely absent from classical mythology.

There are hints that the supreme Olympian god Zeus will fall to the same sort of revolt against him as he led against his own father Cronus to rise to power (with Cronus in turn having risen to power by the same means against his father Uranus).

It’s one of the variant versions told of why Prometheus is chained to a rock with an eagle perpetually eating his liver – that he knew the secret of Zeus’ downfall, according to Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, albeit Prometheus ultimately reconciled with Zeus by confessing the secret. (The secret being that the nymph Thetis would have a son greater than his father, which obviously posed a problem for Zeus as one of her suitors – so instead he arranged for Thetis to marry a mortal Peleus, conceiving Achilles).

There was a similar prophecy for the goddess Metis, except here the problem was that Zeus had already impregnated her – so Zeus pulled the same stunt as his own father and swallowed her, only for his daughter Athena to be born fully grown (and armed) from his head. She was famously one of classical mythology’s virgin goddesses, which I’ve always presumed was in part to avoid any fulfilment of the prophecy through her.

Apart from those hints of the future dethronement of Zeus, there were other revolts against Zeus, invoking the patricidal revolts by Zeus himself against his father Cronus and Cronus before him against Uranus – the primal cosmic battles or war in the heavens of classical mythology encapsulated as the Titanomachy. One is the war of the giants against the gods – the Gigantomachy to match the Titanomachy – and the other, more dangerously, is the attack by the monstrous Typhon on the gods, putting them to flight and even maiming Zeus himself. There’s even at least one coup attempt by other gods, including Zeus’ wife Hera – as told in the Iliad.

But for the most part, the apocalypse of the Olympian gods is more a matter of fading away in the twilight of any active religion or ritual for them. Or even dying, as was famously reported for Pan – “Pan is dead!”

Although ironically, as the argument does, Pan was the one Olympian god who did not die, being reborn with his goat-hooved and goat-halved form as the guise of the Christian Devil – better to reign in a Christian hell than to serve in an Olympian heaven I suppose. Sadly, it seems that argument is overstated but I prefer to believe it.

 

EQUAL RITES

 

Classical mythology has a prolific number of goddesses and divine (or semi-divine) female figures, such that it may seem to rival even Hindu mythology for the equal rites of its goddesses, particularly as the twelve Olympians were evenly divided between gods and goddesses – at least unless (or until) Dionysus substitutes for Hestia.

However, classical mythology seems to stop short of a supreme divine female figure (like that of Shaktism within Hindu mythology). As iconic as the divine female figures of classical mythology are, they tend to be subordinate to the divine male figures – particularly the supreme divine male figure of Zeus.

And yet there are hints or at least revisionist interpretations of the original or ultimate predominance of its goddesses or divine female figures. One of the most famous for the latter was by Robert Graves in his study of classical mythology, The Greek Myths (and popping up again in his poetic creed of the goddess, The White Goddess), although my favorite remains that of Barbara Walker in The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets. As for Celtic mythology and Arthurian legend, there is something of a cottage publishing industry in revisions of classical mythology focusing on its distinctive female figures.

Whatever the truth of such hints or interpretations, classical mythology has to rank high for equal rites if only for both the prolific number of its female figures and their enduring iconic nature.

 

DIVINE COMEDY

 

As for the equal rites of its goddesses or female figures, classical mythology has to rank highly for its divine comedy – in the prolific number and enduring iconic nature of myths with comedic elements or trickster figures. Arguably the Odyssey is one long trickster’s tale. Indeed, the origins of dramatic comedy is in Greek theater or drama, which tended to revolve around the tales, themes or tropes of classical mythology.

Of course, as like to quip, life is the laughter of the gods but sometimes they have a black sense of humor.

 

TWILIGHT OF THE GODS

 

“What ailed us, gods, to desert you?”

Alas, I can’t deny the twilight of the gods of classical mythology – or that it is the one I feel most acutely.

Like Norse mythology, the gods of classical mythology have faded from religious belief and ritual by all but a tiny neo-pagan following. However, they loom even larger than those of Norse mythology in being adapted by their successor or within culture and popular imagination.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER)

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Books (2) Bulfinch’s Mythology

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Botticelli’s Birth of Venus

 

(2) BULFINCH’S MYTHOLOGY (1867)

 

I believe in all the gods –
especially the goddesses.

Now we get into the second of my three B’s, the top trinity of my top ten books of mythology. And we’re going old school for this one, as in nineteenth century old school – named for its American author Thomas Bulfinch and published as a collection of three volumes after his death in 1867. Yet Bulfinch’s Mythology still remains a classic reference (and handily in the public domain) – as indeed it was for me as my introduction as a child to the world of classical mythology. Well, technically that was the first volume – the Age of Fable – which also featured a briefer recitation of Nordic mythology, admittedly a close second to my love for classical mythology. (The second volume – The Age of Chivalry – featured Arthurian legend, while the third volume The Legends of Charlemagne is pretty much what it says on the tin).

Looking back to it now, it’s somewhat dated and has its flaws as a reference – particularly as his obituary noted, it was “expurgated of all that would be offensive”. Or in other words, half the fun of classical mythology or all the sex and violence. (Indeed, his Wikipedia entry includes an uncited reference that Bulfinch was an anti-homosexuality activist in his final years. If true, that would have made for some awkwardness when compiling classical mythology – those gods tended to swing all ways). Which is somewhat disappointing, because having learnt that Bulfinch was a merchant banker, I fondly imagined him as staid banker by day and Bacchanalian by night, similar to the hedonistic heathen imagined by Chesterton in The Song of the Strange Ascetic.

However, it remains one of the most accessible single-volume references to classical mythology for the general reader – as Bulfinch wrote in his preface:

“Our work is not for the learned, nor for the theologian, nor for the philosopher, but for the reader of English literature, of either sex, who wishes to comprehend the allusions so frequently made by public speakers, lecturers, essayists, and poets, and those which occur in polite conversation.”

Anyway, its impact as an introduction to classical mythology remains profound – if, deep within my psyche, there is any mythology that tempts me to actual religion, it’s classical mythology.

Yes – it’s the nymphs.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)