| From what we have just read, the dragon fits all the qualifications of an occulted mushroom. The dragon is a flying reptile, in other words, a bird-serpent. Human Sacrifice Carl Ruck, noted expert of Greek religion and history, including use of psychedelics, offers this slight leaning towards this idea, yet does not appear to embrace it fully, or conceived of it as a primary factual reality: “It became, above all, the god’s victim, to be appeased and offered in sacrifice, for the plant belonged to the wilderness that has preceded the growth and evolution of the superior Olympian age of assimilated and reconciled divinities who presided over the perfection of Hellenic culture. Thus, it became also the pharmakos offering, either the actual giving of human lives or, as became increasingly appropriate to the god’s own civilized persona, the token offering of the same.” (284) Then, Ruck proceeds to cite Euripides Phoenissae, at section 1408. The following is extracted from Euripedes Phoenissae: TEIRESIAS: Then hear the purport of my oracle, the which if ye observe ye shall save the city of Cadmus. Thou must sacrifice Menoeceus thy son here for thy country, since thine own lips demand the voice of fate. CREON: Whence came this curse on me and my son? TEIRESIAS: Thou dost right to ask me and to test what I have said. In yonder lair, where the earth-born dragon kept watch and ward o'er Dirce's springs, must this youth be offered and shed his life-blood on the ground by reason of Ares' ancient grudge against Cadmus, who thus avenges the slaughter of his earth-born snake. If ye do this, ye shall win Ares as an ally; and if the earth receive crop for crop and human blood for blood, ye shall find her kind again, that erst to your sorrow reared from that dragon's seed a crop of warriors with golden casques; for needs must one sprung from the dragon's teeth be slain. Now thou art our only survivor of the seed of that sown race, whose lineage is pure alike on mother's and on father's side, thou and these thy sons.” Remember what we read earlier, about the warriors sprung from dragon’s teeth. In Greece, a ritual scapegoat is referred to as the “pharmakos.” A pharmakos was the embodiment of human evil that was expelled from the city during times of crises or disaster. Or, in some cases, the pharmakos can be the healing medicine brought in to the city for purification. From The Pharmakos in Archaic Greece, on the Harvard website, we read: “On the one hand, the pharmakos could be the medicine that heals the city (according to Scholia on Aristophanes Knights 1136c, the pharmakos is used in order to obtain a therapeia—‘service, tending, medical treatment’—for the prevailing disaster.” - The footnote for this is selected hereby, (For pharmakos as therapeia, cf. theraps, therapōn, ‘attendant, servant,’ which is probably, but not certainly, cognate with Hittite tarpassa-, tarpa(na)lli, ‘substitute victim.’ Cf. Tischler 1993:27–32). (285) |
We don’t know for certain how it happened exactly, but we can see here, in this example of the pharmakos being a substitute victim in the ritual, the implication of a dual role shared by “servant” and “victim.” The ritual in Greece, however, did not sacrifice anyone, but led the “victim” out of the city through “expulsion.” The Greeks called the whole expulsion process a katharsis. Sometimes the pharmakoi was fed by the state and for up to a year prior to expulsion. It would cost a lot to house and feed these pharmakoi so this privilege was reserved for the more important people. (286) According to the Center for Hellenic Studies, which I consulted for a part of this section: “Outside the city, according to some accounts, whose reliability has been thoroughly debated, he was killed—by stoning, burning, or by being thrown over a cliff into the ocean.” (287) The article then mentions how the “sacrifice” was often voluntary and performed for the benefit of the city by the “hero” who sacrifices himself: “Death is often voluntary, an important theme, as in the case of Aglauros, daughter of Cecrops, the first king of Attica. According to one variant, when Athens is besieged, an oracle states that the only chance of victory is for someone to sacrifice himself or herself on behalf of the city. Aglauros therefore commits suicide by jumping off the Acropolis. She is rewarded with an Aglaureion after death, where male ephebes later took their oath of allegiance in connection with their military service. (She is the first of eleven “gods” called as witnesses in this oath.) Once again, we find the scapegoat theme aligned with the military ethos.” And lastly, we return to the article from Harvard University on the pharmakos, and we find at least two characteristics that are shared in common with “sacrificial victims” are they are sometimes royal, and they are sometimes virgins, “Royal. Often the legendary scapegoats are seen as royal, princes or princesses. Virgin. Often the scapegoat is female, young, sexually pure, voluntary, as in the case of Aglauros.” (288) (284) Ruck, Persephone's Quest, 249 (285)https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/4912.part-i-greece-1-the-pharmakos-in-archaic-greece#n.4 (286) Bremmer 1983b:305; Burkert 1979:65. Cf. Plato Apology 36d–e, with notes by Dyer 1976:106 (287) The following citations are given. (See the following note; Bremmer 1983b:315–317; Murray 1934:326–331; below, app. A. For precipitation over a cliff, often linked with stoning, Steiner 1995, cf. Barkan 1979:54–55. See also Frazer 1913 3:417, at 4.22.7) Further notes given for further research include: 30. Scholiast on Ovid Ibis 467, b. Also, Scholia on Aristophanes Knights 1136c: ethuon: “they killed [or “sacrificed”].” Scholia on Aeschylus Seven Against Thebes 680, ethuon “they killed [or “sacrificed”]” as quoted in Wiechers 1961:34. Lactantius on Statius Thebaid X 793: hostia humana “human sacrifice”; Tzetzes Chiliades 5.731: tēn thusian, “the sacrifice.” Murray 1934:328–329, cf. 32–35; Bremmer 1983b:315–318; Vernant 1981:200n41. Barkan notes that while some scholars (e.g. Hirzel) have suggested that stoning outside the city took place so that the victim might escape, the evidence does not support such an idea.” 1979:52 (288)https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/4912.part-i-greece-1-the-pharmakos-in-archaic-greece |