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hawkwing_lbOkay.
So I'm trying to figure out how to adequately put into words the trend in religious and cultic activity in the Hellenistic period to combine a universalising view of certain deities - particularly deities such as Isis and Cybele, who became the foundation of the later Roman "mystery cults", but also including Jupiter (Zeus) Heliopolitanus and some few other deities - with a much more personal view of the relationship (connection) between worshipper and deity.
This doesn't apply across the board, and it doesn't (necessarily) apply to the state cults of the Greek city-states. I think it might possibly be seen as of a piece with the spread in popularity of Asklepios and other healing cults wherein incubation within the sanctuary was a standard behaviour and healing was bound up with the deity, but I'm not sure I can explain by deductive reasoning something that seems intuitively plausible to me.
I'm having more luck relating the increase in views of deities which saw them as universal and amenable to a more personal relationship with their worshipper to the vast increase in the size and traversability of the Hellenistic (and shortly afterwards, Roman) world after the campaigns of Alexander. For a brief while, the entirety of the Near and Middle East comprised (mostly kind of) Greek kingdoms, and social mobility was at an all-time peak. And once you moved away from your native city, you left your civic gods behind: a bigger world needed gods that were at once vaster and more personal, as counterweight to the size of the spaces that could now be crossed much more easily.
So you get Isis of the many names, Isis Soteria, Isis Pelagia, etc.
But I still need to do some work on how to make a case for what seems intuitively plausible. Possibly I need to do some more reading on incubation, if I can ever find the time.
Thoughts?
So I'm trying to figure out how to adequately put into words the trend in religious and cultic activity in the Hellenistic period to combine a universalising view of certain deities - particularly deities such as Isis and Cybele, who became the foundation of the later Roman "mystery cults", but also including Jupiter (Zeus) Heliopolitanus and some few other deities - with a much more personal view of the relationship (connection) between worshipper and deity.
This doesn't apply across the board, and it doesn't (necessarily) apply to the state cults of the Greek city-states. I think it might possibly be seen as of a piece with the spread in popularity of Asklepios and other healing cults wherein incubation within the sanctuary was a standard behaviour and healing was bound up with the deity, but I'm not sure I can explain by deductive reasoning something that seems intuitively plausible to me.
I'm having more luck relating the increase in views of deities which saw them as universal and amenable to a more personal relationship with their worshipper to the vast increase in the size and traversability of the Hellenistic (and shortly afterwards, Roman) world after the campaigns of Alexander. For a brief while, the entirety of the Near and Middle East comprised (mostly kind of) Greek kingdoms, and social mobility was at an all-time peak. And once you moved away from your native city, you left your civic gods behind: a bigger world needed gods that were at once vaster and more personal, as counterweight to the size of the spaces that could now be crossed much more easily.
So you get Isis of the many names, Isis Soteria, Isis Pelagia, etc.
But I still need to do some work on how to make a case for what seems intuitively plausible. Possibly I need to do some more reading on incubation, if I can ever find the time.
Thoughts?
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Date: 2010-01-05 09:15 pm (UTC)<---clueless Science major
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Date: 2010-01-05 09:24 pm (UTC)Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubation_%28ritual%29).
Incubus and incubation come from the same Latin root, though. Incubus came from incubo, meaning one who lies down upon, the noun form of incubare.
no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 09:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-05 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-06 08:03 pm (UTC)::looks up "Ways To De-satanize Your Incubator"::
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Date: 2010-01-06 08:06 pm (UTC)