Skip to main content

The loss of “aura” of the King-God

 

The discrediting of the person of the King-God was a gradual process and, from the point of view of the effectiveness of his power, something very relative. In China and Japan, the figure of the King-God will remain until the twentieth century of our era, and today, the United Kingdom maintains a royal-priestly figure as head of the State, as is also the case in several Asian countries. However, the exposure of the King-God to the government's own vicissitudes causes his mana, the aura, in Benjaminian (Walter Benjamin) terms, to decrease and his link with the divinity will no longer be that of the avatar, but that of a vicar who receives power. of the god, though divine enough for the dominated classes. The mythical plane of universal law is the result of a progressive development of more and more abstract divine persons from the epistemological and moral attributes of the King-God, as we saw in the case of Maat and Ra, or in the story of Marduk. and the Tablets of Destiny, in this case, an attribute usurped from his predecessor Kingu, who in turn had stolen it from Enlil. In the myth of Ra, it is the personification of an attribute, while the Babylonian narrative presents us with an objectification, a talisman or magical object of power. The Tables contain written information on the laws of the universe, Mes, but they are also a document that confer on the bearer the legitimacy in the exercise of power, previously conferred on the gods Enlil and Enki, gods-kings prior to Marduk of an agricultural and civilizing nature. The Babylonian objectification of the law is associated with writing, and this is sanctioned by a seal that confirms it as Me, as truth, virtue and wisdom. The Sumerian concept of Me is not limited to these three, in fact, the Mes are the final evolution of a process of abstraction that began in a more pragmatic way. As we read in “Enki and the order of the world”, the Mes are actions that entail order and abundance, in relation to livestock, irrigation, harvest and trade, as well as in relation to the passing of the months of the year and the order of the heavens. In the Poem of Inana and Enki (Water), which narrates the transfer of the powers of civilization from Eridu to Uruk, we find listed the actions that constitute the Mes: the arts of wood, metallurgy, writing, the construction of baskets, houses, but also institutions, concepts and objects, such as the lordship, the divinity, the monarchy, the scepter, the herding of elites, the royalty of certain people, the many priestly positions, the truth, the descent into hell and the return, sexuality and prostitution, the legal language and that of libel, art, music and musical instruments, heroism, judgment, decision, and a few more.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Please write here your comments

Popular posts from this blog

Limen et Continuum

  Existence is Encounter. Meeting at the limen. In the limen, the masks disappear, that is, the basic intuitions of identities, such as the identity that I feel and think in relation to the tree that I see in front of me. The identity of the tree is a projection of mine: the unity of my process of perceiving the tree generates a mask in me, the ghost of a limited unity separated from everything else. The simplest form of intuitive understanding of masks and limen is given to us by numbers. Numbers intuitively express the liminal tension that is Existence. A little etymological note. Rythmos in Greek means flow. Arythmos (number) is what does not flow, what remains solidified. Numbers express the liminoid, and flow, rhythm, expresses the liminal. A rhythm becomes liminoid when we can trace patterns in it, that is, when we can construct masks of identities. Mathematics has spoken of flow using the Latin word “continuum”, the continuous. All modern science, since Leibni...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is Mythopoetics?

  The narrative grew in the process of being told, as myths always do. The Blog has become more labyrinthine over the years. It contains my Mythopoetics book and a few other things. For those who access these texts without knowing anything about Mythopoetics, I am going to post the introduction of the first part, so you can decide if you want to spend your precious time thinking about the identity narratives that we humans have developed over the years. throughout our eventful existence as a species. "Mythological narratives are the only intellectual activity that has been continuously practiced by human beings, a fact that makes them a unique tool for thinking synthetically our evolution as homo-sapiens. In this sense, they are the first valuation settings that humans have made about themselves and their environment, and as such, they have conditioned the ones that have come afterwards, both in form and content. Their communicative function places them at the basis o...
Post a Comment
Read more

What do we marry?

  The narrative tradition of India contains true gems of fantastic literature that give rise to the most entertaining ethical and metaphysical speculations. In the collection of stories from the 11th century Katha-Sarit-Sagara ( The Ocean that Contains Streams of Stories ), which collects traditional stories from India, the loquacious ghost of a corpse taken down from a gallows tells the king who took him off the macabre swing a very interesting tragicomic tale. Two friends undertook a pilgrimage to a sacred spa of the goddess Kali, and there they saw a beautiful girl. One of them fell ill with passion, stopped eating and sleeping, and was sure that he would die unless he could have that girl as his wife. His friend contacted her father and explained the situation. The father, hurriedly, went to the girl's parents in order to organize the wedding. Shortly after the hasty marriage, the young couple and her friend left for her parents' house. On the way, they ca...
Post a Comment
Read more