Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

It's a little before midnight, so we can proceed with a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. With certain exceptions, any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. Please note:  Any question or comment received after then will not get an answer, and in fact will just be deleted. (I've been getting an increasing number of people trying to post after these are closed, so will have to draw a harder line than before.) If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 143,916th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.1 of The Magic Monday FAQ here. Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says. 

The image? I field a lot of questions about my books these days, so I've decided to do little capsule summaries of them here, one per week. The book above on the left is the current edition of my seventh published book, The New Encyclopedia of the Occult. I'd gotten irritated about the lack of decent reference works on occultism, and Llewellyn, the publisher I worked with in those days was enthusiastic about the idea of helping to fix that. It was a fun project, and includes a certain number of quiet and rather abstruse jokes; there are other occult encyclopedias available these days but this one still stands up fairly well -- though I'd make a lot of changes if the publisher was interested. (This also turned out to be the last book I did with Llewellyn for a long while, due to some issues involving their treatment of another project of mine.)  If you're interested in the encyclopedia, you can get a copy here if you live in the US, and at your favorite book venue if you live elsewhere.

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I've also had quite a few people over the years ask me where they should buy my books, and here's the answer. Bookshop.org is an alternative online bookstore that supports local bookstores and authors, which a certain gargantuan corporation doesn't, and I have a shop there, which you can check out here. Please consider patronizing it if you'd like to purchase any of my books online.

And don't forget to look up your Pangalactic New Age Soul Signature at CosmicOom.com.

With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed -- as in, no further comments will be put through. See you next week!***

Comments

Roman and Greek views of the afterlife

[scottyc]

A question for those that are knowledgeable about Greek and Roman religion: was their view of the afterlife as dismal as is commonly portrayed?

I always come across references of Hades being a dismal place in which the spirits are miserable. If this was the common belief then it must have been a miserable for Greeks and Romans when considering death and would explain the popularity of religious sects that promised something better in the afterlife.

By no means am I an expert on Greek and Roman religion but I'm skeptical that only misery or, at best, ennui, was to be expected after death (history written by the winners and all that).

I'm thinking there must have been some sort of hope for a good afterlife in those cultures but have not come across anything positive.

Re: Roman and Greek views of the afterlife

[sdi]

If I may, "Greek Religion" wasn't ever a single, monolithic thing! The Homeric view you cite was certainly influential, but Hesiod and Pindar speak of the Fortunate Isles as a counterpoint for heroes and the virtuous; and further the Mystery schools, the Pythagorean cult, and Platonic philosophy all taught about reincarnation. (Indeed, in later times, all these views tended to mix together.) Plato also tells us that the belief in mere oblivion after death was widespread in his time.

You might find Hesiod's Works and Days and Plato's Myth of Er (from the last book of the Republic) to be good starting points in these alternatives.

Re: Roman and Greek views of the afterlife

[scottyc]

Sdi,

Thanks much to you and also to the esteemed JMG for your replies. This is a relief as I guess I have only been exposed to the Homeric view and seem that most accounts I ran across emphasized the dismal fate in Hades.

Re: Roman and Greek views of the afterlife

[ecosophia]

Sdi's made about half of the points I would have made. The other thing I'd point out is that the whole point of the ancient Greek mysteries was that they offered a better afterlife -- and an enormous number of Greeks and Romans became initiates of one mystery or another. In Athens, for example, the Eleusinian mysteries were a big annual event for the whole city, and a very substantial share of the city's residents (including women and slaves, who were explicitly permitted to take part) were initiated into it.

Re: Roman and Greek views of the afterlife

[(Anonymous)]

In my own meditations on the Greek traditions I've been focusing on the myths behind the mystery traditions: The story of Persephone and Hades and the story of Orpheus(+related stories of Dionysus.) There are similarities between the two myths, and you don't need to squint too hard to see there's more going on than spending the afterlife in (at best) a nice cave with Hades.

Your comment on the dismal nature of the Greek afterlife actually added to a few thoughts I've been having about the history of Western religions in general, so thanks for that insight!

I've found it interesting to think about how diverse pantheons in the Western world (in some cases you could even lump in Hinduism as a holdover from this Eurasian religious tradition) evolved into monotheistic religions. But, at least as Christianity evolved in Europe, it became less experiential and more based in dogma (the intellectual battles of early Christianity come to mind... more experiential ideas about Jesus became battles about what the "substance" of Christ was.)

The Homeric traditions of the underworld might be an echo of a similar process. A more literal interpretation of what happens when you die: you go underground, and hang out with Hades!