[Main Blog Post] [Book] Thoughts on The Ancient City

[jprussell]

I've been hearing a lot about The Ancient City by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, and I finally got around to reading it. Very short version is that it's a good and interesting book, but unless it intersects with some particular interests of yours, you might be fine with a summary. Here's my attempt at such a summary, with some thoughts on what I got out of it (and wanted to, but didn't).

As always, any and all thoughts are most welcome.

Comments

[causticus]

Very thorough summary of the book, if I may say so!

One thing that dawned on me way after the fact is that The Ancient City could be thought of as a work of early social science; a sort of anthropological study or perhaps archaeosociology. By that, it is the latent materialist reductionism we see all throughout the book is perhaps a bit more understandable, considering the type of intellectual habits that were en vogue during the time period the book was written.

Your "undead theory" of ancestral worship is fascinating and I think something that warrants further contemplation; perhaps I'll muse on this topic sometime around Samhain ;) I do agree that the term, "the ancestors" we see tossed around a lot in neopagan and eclectic occultist circles is rather vague and murky. I suspect the origin of this term is largely a product of people in those circles dabbling in ATR practices. From the reading I've done on this topic (by practitioners), it seems that "the ancestors" in those traditions is an umbrella term for what's actually a grab-bag of different spirit entities; some of them not-so-nice. The unflattering reality for present-day westerners is that we've been cut off from the practice of ancestor worship for more than a millenium, thus we really don't have anything remotely experiential to go on, besides simple things like keeping photos of deceased relatives up on the mantle piece and occasionally offering them words of respect and fond memory. As you mention, we end up borrowing practices out of context from alien cultures; I'm convinced that this might not be so helpful in the long run. I also agree with you that the "family cult" of yore cannot be insta-memed back into existence; these are things that take many, many centuries to evolve organically. I frankly have no idea how ancestral worship might manifest in whatever future cultures emerge from our own. Also, that the ancient family cultus (and tribal/national traditions) was a lot more varied and nuances than Coulanges might suggest, of course makes tons of sense for anyone who has studied natural religious practices and spirituality in depth using the knowledge we now have.

So many other fascinating things you bring up in your summary, but sadly there's not enough hours in the day for me to comment on even half of them.

[jprussell]

Thanks for your kind words! I started out thinking "I'll write a nice, short, sharp summary and be done with it," and then it kind of grew in the telling, so glad to hear you found some of it useful.

1) I think characterizing it as an early or proto- form of anthropology or sociology is spot on. He takes the beliefs of the ancients seriously as their beliefs, and seeks to use that to explain things, rather than other mechanisms, but he adopts an outside perspective, remaining, at most, agnostic on whether they had any good reason to hold such beliefs - he just takes them as a premise and goes from there. There's value to such a viewpoint, but it has its limits (I was having a conversation recently in a group chat about how there is value in both the "insider" and "outsider" viewpoints on religion, but both also have their drawbacks, and it's hard to find folks who combine them effectively. I might expand that into a blog post sometime soon).

2) Yeah, ever since being exposed to JMG's explanation of the mound burial technology and its debased form in vampires, I've looked at a lot of old school ancestor worship practices in a whole new light. I'm reading The Deities are Many by Jordan Paper now (you might have been the first to recommend that to me, can't remember), and the description of Chinese ancestor veneration also seems to fit the bill. In case I wasn't clear in the review, I think that such practices can be good and beneficial to all involved, even if it is "keeping the etheric body (ghost) alive past its normal span," but it seems especially prone to "going wrong" if everyone involved doesn't a) know what they're doing, and b) take doing it right seriously. As such, I have become very wary of incorporating practices that seem to support that mode of interacting with the dead in a cavalier fashion. Luckily, modern burial practices render it almost certainly moot, as JMG points out in the section on vampires in Monsters, so clueless eclectics aren't very likely to accidentally create vampires, but I could certainly see a situation where ill-informed approaches to "veneration" hinder the souls of our loved ones moving on in the way they might want or need to.

2) Agreed that dabbling in ATR practices strikes me as a bad idea. Some of this might just be lingering cultural bias, seeing things like voodoo as "scary" and "wrong" due to inherited Christian prejudices, but also, some of it really does sound kinda scary to me (like spirit possession - I know there are lots of legitimate religious traditions that make use of it, but it seems really prone to going to bad places if not done scrupulously). Even if such practices are healthy and worthwhile in the right context, I suspect that trying to borrow here and there, give them a shot without proper training, and so forth, is a recipe for some bad news. Am I saying such practices don't have anything to teach us outside of their cultural contexts? Absolutely not, but I'd err pretty far on the side of "look, but don't touch, until you're absolutely, positively, 100% sure you know what you're doing."

3) Which nicely brings me to your point about the difficulty of establishing any kind of organic, authentic ancestor worship in our culture moving forward. I agree that anything robust will take a good, long time to take root and grow, but I also feel like, well, here I am, I've gotta do something. For that, I have so far found JMG's guidance on magical ethics and dealing with spirits generally to be good guardrails for not doing anything too stupid. Don't automatically trust spirits to be who they say they are, pay attention to how they make you feel and what kind of thing they tell you, make consent an utmost priority through things like "my blessings, if you'll have them" or "if that is best for all involved" and so forth, and overall, when in doubt, ask the Gods to do what is right rather than trying to do it myself. I also combine this with something like the dulia/latria distinction: the "worship" I offer ancestors is not exactly the same in feeling, intent, or practice as what I give to the Gods. When in doubt, I err on the side of more "remembering" and "honoring" ancestors rather than "praying to" them, other than offering and asking for the most general sort of blessings.

Altogether, I have a very tentative "I'll be respectful and grateful and careful, and go from there" approach, which I hope will prove fertile ground for more specific or robust practices to develop, but I suppose we'll see (even if it's only when our great-great-great-grandkids are offering us incense ;)).

Lastly, hah, I know the lack of time all too well, but if you happen to find some and have more to share, I'm always glad to hear it.

Cheers,
Jeff