A Study of Evil

 FROM MYTH TO REALITY

 Now it becomes even more complicated. We can no longer attribute the uncomfortable or disturbing to myth or to the “works in mysterious ways” explanation. We now have actual figures from history burning opponents alive, pouring liquid metal down the throats of prisoners, lowering followers of different religious sects onto sharpened stakes, or hanging children for petty crimes. We look for origins, sadly I might add.

 T.S. Eliot began his classic poem The Waste Land[i], with simple lines since borrowed by every cub reporter who has had the chance to write an editorial about springtime:

“April is the cruellest month …”

None bother to quote it with the next few lines.

“April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.”

So what do we have here?

While offering no claim to be a scholar worthy of analyzing Eliot, I did take the time once to follow the references that he offered to understanding his poem. This led to a reading of the (abridged version) of Sir James George Frazier’s monumental work The Golden Bough, A Study in Magic and Religion.[ii] That work offers an interesting tack into the trade winds of history.

Frazier recounts how, in humankind’s quest for explanations of the world, it shifted from magic to religion and, ultimately to science. Of magic, he found two forms, one an imitative (replication the sounds of thunder, for example) and one based on a sympathetic relationship between causes, i.e. religion. He eventually discounts each as a false, “association of ideas” and credits science with the best avenue for dealing with uncertainties. Of course magic and science did not fail to intermix, as in the case of alchemy for example.

Enough of that. What interests us here are the sections in which Frazier deals with the fear that primitive societies held that the world each fall and winter, requiring specific actions for a rebirth in the spring.

What could be a greater manifestation of sympathetic magic than the sacrificing of strong and/or beautiful victims in order to restore the vitality of the Earth?

Who among us, though, could now doubt the evil in an act of leading a beautiful young virgin, or the tribe’s strongest young male, to an alter to be sacrificed, sometimes horribly, in order that the tribe might bring forth sustenance for the community during the coming year? Of course if youth and beauty were in short supply, as well as virgins, the burning of a man, say a stranger, might suffice.

Yes, for some April was indeed the cruelest month in light of the vegetation rituals that became, according to Frazier, pervasive throughout the planet.

Associated with all this is a companion belief that the well-being of a tribe, nation, or society is equivalent to the vitality of its king, or leader. Thus, we get odd, and some might say evil, practices in some societies by which the aging king rules until a younger one murders him. In fact, Frazier begins his lengthy work with a description of such a practice in ancient Greece. The passage bears repeating:

“In antiquity this sylvan landscape was the scene of a strange and recurring tragedy. On the northern shore of the lake . . . stood the sacred grove and sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis, or Diana of the Wood [fertility goddess of Classical Roman tradition] . . . . [in] this sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time of day, and probably far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy. He was a priest and a murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary. A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the priest, and having slain him, he retained office till he was himself slain by a stronger or craftier . . . The post which he held by this precarious tenure carried with it the title of king [King of the Wood–Rex Nemorensis]; but surely no crowned head ever lay uneasier, or was visited by more evil dreams, than his.”[iii]

Here we find a reference to  Shakespeare’s’ “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”[iv]

It would appear then that some of the earliest introductions to evil themes centered on the gaining of great power, either that offered by nature or that offered by society.

How did that shift into such a common practice, a practice instigated by one individual against another, sometimes for no apparent gain?

Mind the helm.

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[i] Eliot, T. S. (2001). The Waste Land (M. North, Ed.). WW Norton.

[ii] Frazer, J. G. (1923). The Golden Bough: A study in magic and religion. Abridged ed. London: Macmillan.

[iii] Frazier, op. cit. Chapter One.

[iv] Henry IV, Part 2.