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Reddit mentions of The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion

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We found 3 Reddit mentions of The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion. Here are the top ones.

The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion
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Found 3 comments on The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion:

u/Nocodeyv · 4 pointsr/pagan

If you're looking for information on the Mesopotamian pantheon, I can give you a few good places to start.

 

First, try the ORACC website. It provides general overviews of many of the major deities of the Mesopotamian pantheon, including their function in the religion, their iconography, their genealogy, and more.

Second, the ETCSL provides a collection of myths, cult songs, prayers, wisdom literature, and more from the Third Dynasty of Ur (a transitional period between the Akkadians and the Babylonians). When most people think of Mesopotamian mythology, they're thinking of material from this period in its history.

Third, the SEAL project is set up much the same as ETCSL, but focuses on Akkadian, Assyrians, and Babylonian literature instead of Sumerian. You'll have to do some exploring on SEAL, as not every text listed has a translation available.

 

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As far as book recommendations are concerned:

 

The Treasures of Darkness by Thorkild Jacobsen is an excellent introductory overview to the stages of Mesopotamian religion, including a plethora of insights into their deities and why certain ones achieved prominence when they did.

Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia by Jean Bottéro (translation by Teresa Fagan) is an excellent exploration of the psychology of Mesopotamian religion, focusing on the mental and emotional connection the people felt towards their gods and goddesses.

The Harps That Once by Thorkild Jacobsen is an exploration of dozens of Sumerian myths, poems, cult songs, and more; each with extensive notes and explanations along the way.

From Distant Days by Benjamin Foster is similar to "The Harps That Once," only it focuses exclusively on Assyrian and Babylonian myths, cult songs, prayers, and so forth.

 

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Finally, I moderate r/Sumer, the subreddit dedicated to the reconstruction and revival of Mesopotamian polytheism. You're more than welcome to join us over there and ask questions.

u/09q830598193840598 · 2 pointsr/WTF

TL;DR: no, there's no drugs or shamanism. Think more modern Wiccan ceremony and less ancient Shamanistic trance-journey.

Long form: The aspects of Shamanism we're familiar with - the trance state, the "journey" to the "spirit world," the separation of spirit-body and physical body -- those are NOT written about as part of Temple practice. And all we have left of Old Babylon is:

  • What was written down by the privileged, educated scribal and religious elite, and only then what survived the millennia after leaving their hands, and

  • What remained of their everyday belief system as manifested centuries and millennia in Late Antiquity, from which period far more data, but also far more confusion and contradiction, survives.

    Some facts about Ancient Mesopotamian Magic, as we know it now:

  • What we know about was practiced BY rich people (Temple elite, who spent years in education preparing for the vocation - think PhD or MD doctors), FOR rich people (kings, nobles, wealthy folks who could afford Temple services)

  • The beliefs of the elite are all we have, and they are highly regimented, elaborate and official-seeming, and directly related to current real-world political structure. The Temple priests were part of the ruling class, and had an interest in creating an orthodox religious practice that reflected social order.

  • In Jacobsen's The Treasures of Darkness there's a clear explanation of the evolution of the religious pantheon imagined as first familial figures, then as political leaders, and later as kings and emperors as the centuries progressed. Always, the Gods in Heaven are a reflection of the leaders on Earth. The magic practiced reflects that, and often calls upon the Gods as authority figures to justify magical action. First the Gods are parents asked to help their suffering children. Later, they're judges, legal witnesses, and ethical arbiters. Not very Shamanistic, which is a lot more grassroots, and anarchic. Shamanism is about the practitioner and the community. Mesopotamian magic is about the King, the needful citizen, and the theory of a complex, cosmopolitan society.

  • We have no evidence of a popular or "grassroots" practice from the most ancient Mesopotamian cultures, except in so far as that ordinary people did seek out formal Temple services, and there were consumer-grade services for the lower classes. Long story short, the Temple definitely didn't do trances or drugs, and we've not got any indication that ordinary folks did it either.

  • Furthermore, when we get better records, and see survivels of Babylonian magic as part of contemporary Hellenic culture, all of those trappings are still of high Temple magic. They're often degraded forms of formerly precise scholarship, like fake Cuneiform amulets that don't say anything but gibberish, but are made by a local craftsman to resemble Temple-produced amulets (which would have been highly specific, like a doctor's prescription) from a bygone era.

  • Unlike in contemporary Shamanism, we have no evidence of any belief in Babylon of spirit worlds, spirit journeys, or altered states of consciousness. There's myth cycles like Inanna's descent into the underworld, but there's a clear, regimented divide between "Heaven," Earth, and "The Underworld." The Underworld is where the Underworld Gods live, BTW. It's not the land of dead humans, which is basically a shitty local existence, located literally under your house. There's no extra parallel spirit world.

  • Unlike in contemporary Shamanism, there's no mention in any of the surviving ritual texts of drug use, or anything that could even sound like a hallucination. Priests are technical practitioners, who are expected to be completely in control, and complete elaborate and highly-choreographed rituals with precision and everything in the right order. A ritual is more like a court case punctuated with symbolic magical performances and a lot of emotional potery.

  • And unlike in Shamanism, there's no separate "spirit world" where the spirits live their own lives separate from ours. There don't seem to be animist or nature spirits at all. There are Gods, who are rulers by virtue of having created humanity and the world. Some, like Lammashtu, are actually pretty dangerous and anti-humanity. Some, like Ea, are very pro-human. Some, like Shamash, just have a job to do - watch everything, and mete out justice. Demons are also of divine origin - they're the go-fers of the Gods. Demons can be sent by pro-human Gods to chase away anti-human Gods. OR they can be sent by justice-loving Gods to punish human evil or thoughtlessness.

  • And your ancestors are in the land of the dead, and need your attention and gifts of food and drink, or they'll starve and thirst. If you forget them, or if there's no one left to care for them, they go crazy with hunger, betrayal, and loneliness, and start to wander. They're the wild "spirits" of the desert, representative of the places outside the city walls where human law and civilization hasn't tamed. They wander around lost and attack anyone in reach. They can't remember who they are.

  • Unlike in Shamanism, where there's a separate place for the dead humans to go, the Land of the Dead is imagined as a sort of eternal waiting room. You just sit under the house, and it sucks, and you slowly forget everything. It's actually pretty depressing. In contrast to the vibrant, well-populated and multi-layered spirit worlds of nature-oriented Shamanisms worldwide, the afterlife of Ancient Babylon is a TV stuck on a dead channel.

  • All of the really good action in Mesopotamia is therefore right here in the city -- the important stuff happens in society and civilization, and in the living human world. Just like there's no civilization or safety outside of the city walls, there's no greater world to be a part of spiritually, either. There's literally no greener grass on the other side of the fence -- just wild animal attacks and chaotic-ghost metaphors. There's no chance of humans dwelling in a summertime paradise or going to live with the Gods (they are distant kings and queens, far above us -- they don't like us enough to invite us home!) in Heaven, or getting punished in the Underworld. (They don't wait to punish you - they'll send you a headache or an illness or kill your livestock right the hell now). While Shamanism tries to attain access to a spiritual plane, there's no point or benefit to that in Mesopotamian practice. It's all about the here and now.


    Basically, ANE magic is the remedy to solve every problem, because they didn't have a lot of other tools. This translation of Mesopotamian ritual texts, myths, and prayers provides a good layperson's overview of the way "magic" was used. Sometimes, it's ritual, sometimes prayer. Sometimes it's just a quick incantation to describe, and therefore get control over, a problem.

    "Apotropaic" is the popular term for Babylonian magic -- almost every instance we have is a prayer or ritual intended to ward off, or turn away, a negative consequence or negative events: everything from passing gas (yes, there's an incantation against breaking wind in the Foster book..) to being convicted in a harsh court system, to illness, death, and actual magical attacks by sorcerers.

    Its principles most strongly resemble those of modern western "Ceremonial Magic," minus the Christianity. There's ritual recitations, specific times of the day or night to do certain actions, there's many of Isaac Bonewits's Principles of Magick

    To remove a magic curse, you rub the patient with an onion, to get the bad juju in the human to sync up with the onion. Then, you slowly peel the onion, stating that as you peel the layers off the onion, the curse is also being peeled away from the patient. The onion can control the curse, is an effective "handle" by which to "grab" the curse, because it's been put into physical contact with the curse-ee. So as you peel the onion and burn the layers, you can say that you're also removing the curse from the human that the onion represents. When the onion's all burnt, so's the curse! That's the principle of Contagion from Bonewits, or just another day at Temple in Babylon.

    To destroy an unknown sorcerer's curse on you, attack the sorcerer, of course. But if you don't know who they are, make a statue (two statutes, a man and a woman, just to cover all the possible cases!), and announce that these statues are your witch or warlock, and that burning them "burns" the real person who cursed you. Bonewits' Sympathetic Principle, or top of the line Mesopotamian evil-fighting technology.

    So that was a lot of words to say, basically, NO, there's no drug use, no shamanism, no trance states, and no real dietary restrictions before rituals (though Maqlu requires a ritual bath, I think?).

    Your shaman buddies who say "no pork before ritual" are actually pulling that out of their asses, probably basing it on generic cultural prejudices against pork absorbed from religious culture.

    Many traditional shamanisms use starvation to create a ritual trance, but taboo foods are 100% arbitrary in all of those systems. Taboo drugs may well be for practical reasons. But many traditional shamans will actually tell you that drug use is overhyped and hardly ever called-for amongst real practitioners. If your shamanism training uses drugs, I'd be extremely skeptical of its authenticity... Not to say it's definitely wrong, but it's highly suspect, as so many modern folks use "shamanism" as a flimsy excuse to feel spiritual about their drug use.
u/bobbleprophet · 2 pointsr/AncientCivilizations

History of Religious Ideas (3 Vols)- Mircea Elidae Link

Treasures of Darkness - Thorkild Jacobsen Link

Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia - Jean Bottero Link (damn I got this for $20 a few months back, great book though)

Religion in the Emergence of Civilization: Çatalhöyük as a Case Study - Ian Hodder & VA Link

Egypt Before the Pharaohs - Michael Hoffman Link