There is therefore a path open from the divine beast to the
anthropomorphic god. From beings like Thesmophoros and Meilichios the
road is of course much easier. They are already more than half
anthropomorphic; they only lack the concreteness, the lucid shape and
the detailed personal history of the Olympians. In this connexion we
must not forget the power of hallucination, still fairly strong, as the
history of religious revivals in America will bear witness,[26:1] but
far stronger, of course, among the impressionable hordes of early men.
'The god', says M. Doutté in his profound study of Algerian magic,
'c'est le désir collectif personnifié', the collective desire projected,
as it were, or personified.[27:1] Think of the gods who have appeared
in great crises of battle, created sometimes by the desperate desire of
men who have for years prayed to them, and who are now at the last
extremity for lack of their aid, sometimes by the confused and excited
remembrances of the survivors after the victory. The gods who led the
Roman charge at Lake Regillus,[27:2] the gigantic figures that were seen
fighting before the Greeks at Marathon,[27:3] even the celestial signs
that promised Constantine victory for the cross:[27:4]--these are the
effects of great emotion: we can all understand them. But even in daily
life primitive men seem to have dealt more freely than we generally do
with apparitions and voices and daemons of every kind. One of the most
remarkable and noteworthy sources for this kind of hallucinatory god in
early societies is a social custom that we have almost forgotten, the
religious Dance. When the initiated young men of Crete or elsewhere
danced at night over the mountains in the Oreibasia or Mountain Walk
they not only did things that seemed beyond their ordinary workaday
strength; they also felt themselves led on and on by some power which
guided and sustained them. This daemon has no necessary name: a man may
be named after him 'Oreibasius', 'Belonging to the Mountain Dancer',
just as others may be named 'Apollonius' or 'Dionysius'. The god is only
the spirit of the Mountain Dance, Oreibates, though of course he is
absorbed at different times in various Olympians. There is one god
called Aphiktor, the Suppliant, He who prays for mercy. He is just the
projection, as M. Doutté would say, of the intense emotion of one of
those strange processions well known in the ancient world, bands of
despairing men or women who have thrown away all means of self-defence
and join together at some holy place in one passionate prayer for pity.
The highest of all gods, Zeus, was the special patron of the suppliant;
and it is strange and instructive to find that Zeus the all-powerful
is actually identified with this Aphiktor: Ζεὺς μὲν Ἀφίκτωρ ἐπίδοι
προφρόνως.[28:1] The assembled prayer, the united cry that rises from
the oppressed of the world, is itself grown to be a god, and the
greatest god. A similar projection arose from the dance of the _Kouroi_,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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