18

Games and Victory

In classical antiquity games (ludi) had a sacred character and they therefore became typical expressions of the traditional path of action. “Ludorum primum initium procurandis religionibus datum, “wrote Livy. It was considered dangerous to neglect the sacred games (negligere sacra certamina); thus, if the state’s funds were depleted, the games were simplified but never suppressed. An ancient Roman law required the duoviri and the aediles to have the games celebrated in honor of the gods. Vitruvius wanted every city to be endowed with its own theater, deorum immortalium diebus festis ludorum spectationibus, and originally the person presiding over the games in the Circus Maximus was also the priest of Ceres, Liber, and Libera. In any event, the person in charge of the games in Rome was always a representative of the official patrician religion; in the case of some games (such as the Salii’s), special priestly colleges were formed for the occasion. The games were so closely related to pagan temples that Christian emperors had no choice but to keep them open, since shutting them down would have caused those games to be canceled; these games even outlasted most ancient Roman institutions, and eventually ended with the Roman Empire itself. An agape to which demons were invited (invitatione daemonum) usually closed the games, signifying a ritual participation of the people in the mystical force associated with them.^[1] Augustine reported that “ludi scenici… inter res divinas a doctissimis conscribuntur.”^[2]

The games assumed the character of res divinae, and they have been replaced today by contemporary sports and by the plebeian infatuation with them. In the Hellenic tradition the institution of the most important games bore a close relationship with the idea of the struggle of Olympian, heroic, and solar forces against natural and elemental forces. The Pythian games in Delphi celebrated Apollo’s triumph over Python and the victory of this Hyperborean god in the contest with other gods. Likewise, the Olympian games were related to the idea of the triumph of the heavenly race over the race of Titans. Heracles, the demigod who was the ally of the Olympian hosts in the struggle against the Giants, was believed to have instituted the Olympian games^[3] and to have symbolically taken the olive branch with which the winners were crowned from the land of the Hyperboreans.^[4] These games had a rigorously virile character; women were absolutely forbidden to attend them. Besides, it was not a coincidence that in the Roman arenas several numbers and sacred symbols appeared repeatedly: the three, in the ternae summitates metarum [the tops of the three columns] and in the tres arae trinis Diis magnis potentibus valentibus [three altars for the triple gods, the Great, the Potent, the Prevailing] that Tertullian^[5] attributed to the great Samothracian Triad; the five in the five spatia of the Domitian racetracks; the zodiac’s twelve in the number of doors from which the chariots entered and exited in the early empire; the seven in the annual games at the time of the Republic, in the number of altars of the planetary gods in the Circus Maximus^[6] (with the sun’s pyramid at the top), in the total number of rounds of a complete race, and in the “eggs,” “dolphins,” or “tritons” located in each of these seven curricula.^[7] Bachofen has noticed that the egg and the triton symbolically referred to the fundamental dualism of the powers at work in the world; the egg represented the generating matter that encompasses every potentiality, while the triton or sea horse, sacred to Poseidon-Neptune and a frequent symbol of the waves, expressed the same fecundating phallic and telluric power whereby, according to a tradition reported by Plutarch, the current of the waters of the Nile was thought to represent the fecundating sperm of the primordial male spilled on Isis, herself a symbol of the land of Egypt. This duality was reflected in the very location where the ancient games and equiria [horse races dedicated to Mars] were held. Tarquinius had his circus built in the valley between the Aventine and the Palatine, which was sacred to Murcia (a feminine-telluric goddess); the tracks of the equiria began at the Tiber’s banks and the finish line was marked with swords planted into Mars’ field. Thus, heroic and virile symbols were found at the end of the tracks (telos) while the feminine and the material element of generation, namely, flowing waters or whatever was sacred to chthonic deities, was found at the beginning of and alongside the tracks.

In this way, action took place in the context of material symbols representing higher meanings, so that “the magical method and technique” hidden in the ludi (which always began with solemn sacrifices and were often celebrated to invoke divine powers at times of an imminent national danger) could have a greater efficacy. The impetus of the horses and the vertigo of the race through seven rounds, which was also compared with and consecrated to the sun’s “journey” in the sky,^[8] evoked the mystery of the cosmic current at work in the “cycle of generation” according to the planetary hierarchy. The ritual slaying of the victorious horse, which was consecrated to Mars, should be connected to the general idea of “sacrifice”; it seems that the force that was consequently unleashed was for the most part directed by the Romans to increase the crops in an occult fashion, ad frugum eventum. (This sacrifice may be considered as the equivalent of the Indo-Aryan aśvamedha, which originally was a magical, ritual, propitiating power.) The Roman ritual was celebrated in extraordinary occasions, for instance at the time of declaration of war or after a victory. Two horsemen entered into the arena, one from the east and the other from the west, to engage in mortal combat; the original colors of the two factions, which were the same colors of the Orphic cosmic egg—white symbolizing winter and red symbolizing summer (or better, the former symbolizing the lunar-chthonic power, the latter the solar-Uranian power^[9])—evoked the struggle of the two great elemental forces. Every goal, meta sudans, was considered as a “living” thing (lίθoς ἔμψνχoς); the altar erected in honor of the god Consus (“He who gathers in,” a demon who fed on the blood spilled in the violent games, or munera) at one of the finish lines of the circus, which was unveiled only on the occasion of the games, appeared as the outlet of infernal forces, just like its Etruscan counterpart, puteal. Higher up, statues of triumphant deities were erected, which referred to the opposite Uranian principle, so that the circus was transformed into a council of numina (daemonum concilium )^[10] whose invisible presence was ritually sanctioned by seats left purposefully vacant. Thus, what on the one hand appeared as the unfolding of action in an athletic, competitive, or scenic event, on the other hand was elevated to the plane of a magical evocation. The risk inherent in this evocation was real in a wider order than that of the lives of the participants in the certamina, whose victory renewed and strengthened in the individual and in the collectivity the victory of the Uranian forces over the infernal forces, a victory that became transformed into a principle of “destiny.” For instance, Apollo’s games were instituted on the occasion of the Punic Wars as a protection against the danger foretold by the oracle; they were repeated to ward off an epidemic of plague, and eventually they came to be celebrated periodically. Thus, during the parade preceding the games, the images (exuviae) of the Capitol gods, protectors of Rome, were solemnly carried from the Capitol to the circus in consecrated chariots (tensae); special regard was paid to the exuviae of Jovis Optimi Maximi (the thunderbolt, the scepter surmounted by the eagle, and the golden crown), which were also the symbols of the imperium. This was done with the assumption that the same occult power inherent in Roman sovereignty witnessed to and participated in the games consecrated to it (ludi Romani) or that it was involved in them. The magistrate who was elected to preside over the games led the parade that carried the divine symbols as if he were a conqueror: he was surrounded by his people and followed by a public slave holding over his head a crown of oak leaves encrusted with gold and diamonds. It is probable that in the early games the quadriga was a symbol of Jupiter’s attributes and an insignia of triumphal royalty; an ancient quadriga of Etruscan origins kept in a Capitoline temple was considered by the Romans as a pledge of their future prosperity.

This explains why those games that were not performed according to tradition were looked down upon as unorthodox sacred rituals; if their representation were upset by an accident or interrupted for any reason, it was considered an omen of bad luck and a curse, and the games had to be started all over again in order to “placate” the divine powers. Conversely, according to a famous legend, when the people, following a surprise attack by the enemy, left the games (which in the meantime were not interrupted) in order to take up arms, they found the enemy miraculously routed by a supernatural power that was later on identified with the power evoked by the rite of the game dedicated to the savior Apollo.^[11] If the games were often consecrated to “Victories” that personified the triumphant power, their purpose was to renew the life and presence of such a power, to nourish it with the new energies that were awakened and that imparted the same direction. This explains why, in specific reference to the certamina and to the munera, the winner appeared to be endowed with a divine character and at times to be a temporary incarnation of a deity. In Olympia, in the moment of triumph, the winner was thought to be an incarnation of the local Zeus, and the public acclamation to the victorious gladiator was incorporated into the ancient Christian liturgy: εις αι νας ἀπò αἰ νoς [forever and ever].^[12]

What should really be considered in this context is what kind of inner (besides ritual and magical) meaning the event may have had for the individual. What has been said about the notion of “holy war” applies in this context as well: the heroic exaltation found in competition and in victory, once it was given a ritual meaning, became the imitation of, or the introduction to, that higher and purer impetus the initiate used to defeat death. This explains the frequent references to the certamina, to the games of the circus, and to the figures of winners in classical funerary art; all these references immortalized in an analogical way the highest hope of the deceased, and visibly portrayed the kind of action most likely to help him overcome Hades and obtain the glory of an eternal life in a way conforming to the traditional path of action. What we find over and over again in sarcophagi, funerary urns, and classical bas-reliefs are the images of a “triumphal death”: winged Victories open the doors of the otherworld’s domain, or uphold the medallion of the deceased or crown him with the evergreen that usually crowns the heads of the initiates. In the context of the Pindaric celebration of the divinity of victorious wrestlers, the Enagogues and the Promachi were portrayed as mystical deities leading the souls to immortality. And vice versa: in Orphism, every victory (Nike) became the symbol of the victory of the soul over the body, and those who achieved initiation were called the “heroes” of a dramatic and endless struggle. What in the myth is the expression of a heroic life, constitutes the model of an Orphic life; therefore in the sepulchral images, Heracles, Theseus, the Dioscuri, Achilles, and others are designated as Orphic initiates: στρατός (militia in Latin) is the term designating the host of initiates, and µνασἱστρατoς the term designating the Mystery’s hierophant. Light, victory, and initiation were eventually represented next to each other in several Hellenic monuments. Helios, as the rising sun (alias Aurora) is a Nike and is endowed with a triumphal chariot; other Nikai were Teletes, Mystis, and other deities or personifications of the transcendent rebirth. When we go from the symbolic and esoteric to the magical aspect, it should be noted that the competitions and the warrior dances celebrated on the occasion of a hero’s death (the Roman equivalent were the ludi celebrated at the funerals of major figures) had the purpose of awakening a mystical, saving force that was supposed to accompany and strengthen him during the crisis that occurred at the moment of death. People also paid homage to the heroes by periodically repeating the contests that followed their funerals.

All this is typical of a traditional civilization qualified by the “pole” of action rather than by the “pole” of contemplation: action as spirit and spirit as action. As far as Greece is concerned, I have already mentioned that in Olympia, action in the form of “games” exercised a unifying function beyond the particularism of the city-states similar to that function manifested through action as “holy war,” as in the case of the supernational phenomenon of the Crusades or, in the context of Islam, during the period of the First Caliphate.

There are plenty of elements that enable us to perceive the innermost aspect of such traditions. I have pointed out that in antiquity the notions of soul, of “double” or daemon, and later on of Furies or Erinyes, and finally of the goddess of death and the goddess of victory were often confused in the same one notion, so much so as to establish the notion of a deity who is simultaneously goddess of battles and a transcendental element of the human soul.

This was the case, for instance, with the notions of fylgja (Nordic tradition) and of the fravashi (Iranian). The fylgja, which literally means “the escort,” was conceived as a spiritual entity dwelling in every man; she may be perceived in special times, for instance at the time of death or of mortal danger. The fylgja was confused with the hugir, the equivalent of the soul, but was also believed to be a supernatural power (fylgjukoma), namely, the spirit of both the individual and of his stock (kynfylgja). But the fylgja was often portrayed as the equivalent of the valkyrie, who in turn was conceived as an entity of “fate” leading the individual to victory and to a heroic death. The same was true for the fravashi of the ancient Iranian tradition, the terrifying goddesses of war who “give victory, health, and good Glory to those who invoke them,” while appearing as “the inner power in every being that maintains it and makes it grow and subsist”^[13] and as “the everlasting and deified souls of the dead”^[14] in relation to the mystical power of the stock, as in the Hindu pitṛ and in the Latin manes.

I have already discussed this kind of “life’s life,” or deep-seated power of life hidden behind the body and the state of finite consciousness. Here it will suffice to say that one’s guiding principle (δαîμoν) or “double” transcends every personal and particular form in which it is manifested; thus, the abrupt and sudden shift from the ordinary state of individuated consciousness to the state characterized by such a principle would usually have the meaning of a destructive crisis, which effectively takes place after death. If we conceive that in some special circumstances the double may “burst” into one’s conscious “I” and manifest itself according to its destructive transcendence, the meaning of the first of the abovementioned assimilations will become apparent; hence the “double” (or man’s guiding principle) and the deity of death that manifests itself (e.g., as a valkyrie) at the moment of death or in circumstances of mortal danger, become one and the same. In the asceticism of a religious and mystical type, self-mortification, renunciation of one’s self, and devotion to God are the preferred means that are employed to induce and to overcome the abovementioned crisis. According to the other path to transcendence, however, the means to induce this crisis consist in the active exaltation and awakening of the element of “action” in a pure state. At an inferior level dance was used as a sacred method to attract and to manifest various divinities and invisible powers through the ecstasy of the soul: this was the orgiastic, shamanistic, Bacchic, Maenadic, and Corybantic theme. In ancient Rome too there were sacred priestly dances performed by the Luperchi and by the Arvali; the words of the Arvali’s hymnal “Help us, O Mars; dance! dance!” already show the relationship between dance and war, which was sacred to Mars.^[15] Another life, unleashed by the rhythm, was grafted onto the life of the dancer, representing the emergence of the abyssal root of the previous life dramatized by the lari as lares ludentes or as Cureti^[16] by the Furies, by the Erinyes, and by the wild spiritual entities that have attributes similar to Zagreus (“Greathunter-who-destroys-everything-on-his-path”). These were manifestations of the guiding principle in its fearful and active transcendence. At a higher level there were the games as munera, namely, as sacred games, and war. In the clear-minded inebriation and in the heroic élan generated in the struggle and in the tension for victory (in the games, but especially in war), Tradition recognized the opportunity to undergo an analogous experience: it appears that even etymologically, ludere conveyed the idea of “untying,” which esoterically referred to the ability usually found in competition to untie the individual bond and to reveal deep-seated powers. Hence a further assimilation through which the guiding principle and the goddess of death not only are identical to the Furies and to the Erinyes, but to the goddesses of war known as the Valkyrie, virgin warriors who magically strike the enemy with a frantic panic (herfjoturr), and to the fravashi, who are “terrible, omnipotent powers who attack impetuously.”

These powers were eventually transformed into goddesses such as Victory or Nike, into the lar victor, into the lar Martis et pacis triumphalis, and into lares, who in Rome were considered as “demigods who have founded the city and instituted the Empire.”^[17] This further transformation corresponds to the positive outcome of such experiences. Just as the “double” signified the deep power at a latent state in relation to the external consciousness; just as the goddess of death dramatized the sensation of the manifestation of this power as a principle of crisis for the essence of the empirical self; and just as the Furies and the Erinyes or the lares ludentes reflected a particular way for this power to become unleashed and to burst out—likewise, the goddess Victoria and the lar victor expressed the triumph over this power, the “two merging into one,” and the triumphant passage to the state that lies beyond the danger of the formless ecstasy and dissolution occurring at the precise frantic moment of action.

Moreover, wherever the actions of the spirit take place within the body of real actions and events (unlike what takes place in the domain of contemplative asceticism), a real parallelism can be established between the physical and the metaphysical, the visible and the invisible; therefore those actions can appear as the occult counterpart of warrior feats or of competitive events, that have a real victory as their climax. Then the material victory reflects a corresponding spiritual event that has determined it alongside the previously disclosed paths of the energies connecting the inside to the outside; in other words, it appears as the real sign of an initiation and of a mystical epiphany taking place simultaneously. The warrior and the military leader who faced the Furies and Death in a real way, met them simultaneously within himself, in his spirit, under the form of dangerous manifestations of powers emerging from his abyssal nature; by triumphing over them, he achievedvictory.^[18] This is why in classical traditions every victory often acquired a sacred meaning; in the imperator, in the hero, and in the leader who was acclaimed victorious on the battlefield—just as in the winner of the sacred ludi—it was possible to detect the abrupt manifestation of a mystical force that transformed him and made him more than a human being. One of the warrior customs practiced by the Romans, which is susceptible to an esoteric interpretation, was the act of carrying the victorious general on shields. Ennius (239–169 B.C.) had previously assimilated the shield to the vault of heaven (altisonum coeli clupeum) and the shield was sacred in the temple of the Olympian Jupiter. In the third century the title of imperator became one and the same with that of victor and the ceremony of triumph, more than a military parade, was a sacred ceremony in honor of the supreme Capitoline god. The winner appeared as the living image of Jupiter and proceeded to put into the hands of this god the triumphal laurel of his victory. The triumphal chariot was the symbol of Jupiter’s cosmic quadriga and the insignia of the leader corresponded to those of the god. The symbolism of “Victories,” Valkyries, or analogous entities leading the souls of the fallen heroes to the “heavens,” or the symbolism of a triumphant hero who, like Heracles, receives from Nike the crown reserved for those who partake of the Olympian immortality, becomes clear and completes what has been said so far about the holy war. We are in the context of traditions in which victory acquires the meaning of immortality similar to that bestowed in an initiation, and in which Victory appears as the mediatrix because of either her participation in transcendence or the manifestation of transcendence into a body of power. The Islamic idea according to which the warriors slain in a “holy war” (jihad) have never really died^[19] should be referred to the same principle.

Last but not least, the victory of a leader was often regarded by the Romans as a separate entity (numen), the mysterious life of which constituted the focus of a special cult; feasts, sacred games, rituals, and sacrifices were destined to renew its presence. The Victoria Caesaris is the best example of this. Being the equivalent of an initiatory or “sacrificial” action, every victory was believed to generate an entity that was distinct from the destiny and from the particular individuality of the mortal being from which it derived; just as in the case of the victory of the divine ancestors, this entity was believed to be capable of establishing a line of special spiritual influences. And as in the case of the cult of the divine ancestors, such influences needed to be confirmed and developed through rites acting in accord with the laws of sympathy and analogy. Therefore, it was mainly through games and competitions that the victoriae as numina were periodically celebrated. The regularity of this competitive cult, which was decreed by law, had the power to materialize a “presence” that was ready to join the forces of the race in an occult fashion and lead them toward a good outcome in order to transform new victories into the means necessary for the revelation, and for the strengthening of the energy of the original victory. Thus, in Rome, once the celebration of the deceased Caesar was confused with that of his victory, and once regular games were dedicated to the Victoria Caesaris, it became possible to see in him a “perennial winner.”^[20]

The cult of Victory, believed to predate history,^[21] may be considered, generally speaking, as the secret soul of the Roman greatness and fides. Since the times of Augustus, the statue of the goddess Victory had been placed on the altar of the Roman Senate; according to a traditional custom, any senator heading for his seat was expected first to approach that altar in order to burn some incense on it. That force was thus believed to preside invisibly over the deliberations of the Curia: hands were raised toward it when an oath of faithfulness was pronounced upon the advent of a new Caesar, and also on every January third when solemn vows were made for the well-being of the emperor and for the prosperity of the empire. This was the most resilient Roman cult, and the last to fall under the onslaught of Christianity.

No belief was more strongly upheld by the Romans than the belief that the divine powers were responsible for creating Rome’s greatness and for supporting its aetemitas^[22] and, consequently, that a war, before being won on the battlefields, had to be won or at least actuated in a mystical way Following the defeat at Lake Trasimene (217 B.C.), Fabius told his soldiers: “Your fault consists in having neglected the sacrifices and in having ignored the declarations of the augurs rather than in having lacked courage or ability.”^[23] It was also an article of faith that in order to take a city it was necessary first to cause its tutelary god to abandon it.^[24] No war was initiated without sacrifices; a special college of priests (fetiales) was entrusted with the rites pertaining to war. The bottom line of the Roman art of war was not to be forced to fight if the gods were opposed to it. Themistocles said: “The gods and heroes performed these deeds, not us.”^[25] Again, the real focus of everything was the sacrum. Supernatural actions were invoked to assist human actions and to infuse in them the mystical power of Victory.^[26]

Since I have mentioned action and heroism as traditional values, it is expedient to underline the difference between them and the forms that, a few exceptions notwithstanding, can be seen in our day and age. The difference consists, once again, in the lack of the dimension of transcendence, and thus of an orientation that, even when it is not dictated by pure instinct and blind force, does not lead to a true “opening” but rather generates qualities that are destined to bestow on the empirical subject only a dark and tragic splendor. In the case of ascetical values we find an analogous alteration that deprives asceticism of every enlightening element as one goes from the notion of asceticism to that of ethics, especially in relation to moral doctrines such as the Kantian and the Stoic ethical systems. Every morality (in its higher versions, such as Kant’s “autonomous morality”), is nothing but secularized asceticism; as such it is only a surviving stump and it lacks a real foundation. Thus, the critique of the modern “free spirits,” Nietzsche included, could easily dismiss the values and the imperatives of the morality improperly designated as “traditional” (“improperly,” because in a traditional civilization no morality enjoyed an autonomous dimension). Our contemporaries, however, have fallen to an even lower level in the shift that occurred from the “autonomous” and categorically imperative morality to a utilitarian and “social” morality affected by a fundamental relativity and contingency.

As is the case with asceticism in general, when heroism and action are not aimed at leading back one’s personality to its true center, they are nothing but an artificial “device” that begins and ends with man; as such they do not acquire a meaning or a value beyond that of sensation, exaltation, and frantic impulsiveness. Such is, almost without exception, the case of the modern cult of action. Even when everything is not reduced to a cultivation of “reflexes” and to a control of elementary reactions, as in the case of war on the frontline (considering the advanced degree of mechanization of the modern varieties of action), it is almost inevitable for man to seek out and to feed himself with existentially liminal experiences wherever they are to be found. Moreover, the plane is often shifted to collective and subpersonal forces, the incarnation of which is furthered by the “ecstasy” associated with heroism, sport, and action.

The heroic myth based on individualism, voluntarism, and a superman attitude constitutes a dangerous deviation in our modern era; on its basis the individual,

Precluding to himself all possibilities of extraindividual and extrahuman development, assumes—by virtue of a diabolical construction—the principle of his insignificant physical will as an absolute reference point and assails the external “phantasm” by opposing to it the phantasm of his own self. It is ironic that when confronting this contaminating insanity, he who realizes what game these poor and more or less heroic individuals are playing, recalls Confucius’ advice according to which every reasonable person has the duty to safeguard his own life in view of the development of the only possibilities by virtue of which a man truly deserves to be called a man.^[27]

The fact remains that modern man needs these degraded and desecrated forms of action as if they were some kind of drug; he needs them to elude the sense of his inner emptiness, to be aware of himself, and to find in exasperated sensations the surrogate for the true meaning of life. One of the characteristics of the Western “Dark Age” (Kali Yuga) is a sort of Titanic restlessness that knows no limitations and that induces an existential fever and awakens new sources of elation and of stupefaction.

Before continuing, I need to mention an aspect of the traditional spirit that is related to the Law and to the views expounded so far. I am talking about various ordeals of character and so-called divine judgments.

Quite often the test of truth, right, justice, and innocence was made to depend on a trial that consisted of a decisive action (experimentum crucis). Just as the law was traditionally believed to have a divine origin, likewise injustice was considered to be a violation of the divine Law and to be detectable through the outcome of a human action that had been given an adequate orientation. A Germanic custom consisted of delving into the divine will through the test of arms as a particular form of oracle mediated by action; the idea that originally was at the basis of the custom of challenging somebody to a duel is not very different. Starting with the principle: “de coelo est fortitudo” (Annales Fuldenses), this principle was eventually extended to feuding states and nations. A battle as late as that of Fonteney (A.D. 841) was conceived as a “divine judgment” that was invoked to establish the rights of two brothers both claiming the legacy of Charlemagne. When a battle was fought in this spirit, it followed special rules: the winner was forbidden to loot and to exploit strategically and territorially the successful outcome, and both sides were expected to tend equally to the fallen and to the wounded. According to the general view that was preserved through the entire Carolingian period, however, even when the idea of a specific proof was not required, victory and defeat were felt to be signs “from above” establishing justice or injustice, truth or guilt. In the legend of the combat between Roland and Ferragus and in analogous themes of chivalrous literature, we can see that during the Middle Ages people believed that the test of arms was the criterion capable of assessing the truer faith.

In other instances the trial consisted in the induction of a paranormal phenomenon. This was the case of classical antiquity too: according to a Roman tradition, a vestal virgin suspected of sacrilege demonstrated her own innocence by carrying water from the Tiber River in a sieve. There was also the custom, which is not confined to the degenerative forms that have survived among savage populations, of challenging a suspect who claimed his or her own innocence to ingest a poison or a substance inducing vomit; if the substance induced the usual effects, the charge was validated. During the Middle Ages analogous voluntary ordeals were found not only in the context of temporal justice, but in the sacred domain too; monks and even bishops agreed to submit themselves to such a criterion in order to establish the truth of their claims in matters of doctrine.^[28] Even torture, which was conceived as a means to interrogate prisoners, was originally related to the notion of “divine judgment.” Truth was believed to have an almost magical power; it was a common belief that no torture could undermine the inner truth of an innocent person and of somebody who was telling the truth.

There is a clear connection between all this and the mystical character traditionally associated with “victory.” In these trials, including the trial of arms, God was “called” as a witness by the participants in order for them to receive from Him a supernatural sign that would then be used as a judgment. It is possible to rise from the lower level of these naive theistic representations to the purer form of the traditional idea, according to which truth, law, and justice ultimately appear as the manifestations of a metaphysical order conceived as a reality that the state of truth and of justice in man has the power to evoke in an objective way. In antiquity the overworld was conceived of as a reality in the higher sense of the word, superior to the laws of nature and capable of manifesting itself in this world every time one opened oneself to it without reservations and concern for one’s self; in the next stage the individual entered into certain psychic states (the already mentioned heroic, competitive state that “unties” the extreme tension of the ordeal and of the danger being faced) that were destined to open the closed human “circuits” to wider “circuits,” and through which it was possible to generate unusual and apparently miraculous effects. This view explains and gives the proper meaning to traditions and customs such as the abovementioned ones. In the order of these customs, truth and reality, might and law, victory and justice formed one thing having the supernatural as their center of gravity.

These views were destined to be regarded as pure superstition wherever “progress” systematically deprived the human virtues of any possibility of establishing an objective contact with a superior order of things. Once man’s strength was thought to be on the same level as that of animals, that is, as the faculty of mechanical action in a being who is not at all connected to what transcends him as an individual, the trial of strength obviously becomes meaningless and the outcome of every competition becomes entirely contingent and lacking a potential relation with an order of higher “values.” Once the ideas of truth, law, and justice were turned into abstractions or social conventions; once the sensation, thanks to which in Aryan India it was possible to say, “The earth has truth as its foundation,” was forgotten; once every perception of these “values” as objective and almost physical apparitions of the supernatural amid the network of contingencies was lost—then it is natural to wonder how truth, law, and justice could possibly influence the determination of the phenomena and facts that science, until recently, has decreed not to be susceptible to modification.^[29] Nowadays, decisions with regard to what is true or right as well as matters of innocence and guilt are left to the clamor of pettifoggers, the laborious promulgation of legal documents, the lengthy paragraphs of laws that are “equal for everybody” and made omnipotent by the secularized states and the plebeian masses who rule themselves without kings and self-appointed rulers. Conversely, the proud self-assurance with which traditional man reacted valiantly and superindividually against the unrighteous, armed with faith and the sword, and the spiritual impassibility that placed him in an a priori, absolute relation to a supernatural power not subject to the power of the elements, sensations, and natural laws—all these things have come to be considered mere “superstitions.”

In this context too, the decline of traditional values has been followed by their inversion; an inversion that can be seen at work wherever the modern world makes a profession of “realism” and seems to take up again the idea of an identity of victory and law with the principle “might is right.” Since this is might in the highest material sense of the word—or better, if we refer to war in its most recent forms, in an almost demonic sense (since the technical and industrial potential has become the most decisive factor)—then we can see that discussions about “values” and righteousness are merely rhetorical. Such rhetoric is employed through big words and a hypocritical declamation of principles as a means in the service of an ugly will to power. This is a particular upheaval characterizing the last times, more on which later.

Footnotes

1. Cassius Dio, Roman History, 51. 1.

2. Augustine, De civitate dei, 4.26.

3. Pindar, The Olympian Odes, 3; 10.42; Diodorus, 4.14.

4. Pindar, The Olympian Odes, 3.13; Pliny the Elder, Historia naturalis, 16.240.

5. Tertullian, De spectaculis, 8.

6. Lidius, De mensibus, 1.4.12.

7. The undeniable symbolism of various details found in Roman circuses is one of the traces of the presence of “sacred” knowledge in the ancient construction art.

8. In antiquity the god Sol had a temple in the middle of the circus; the circuit races were sacred to this god who was represented as steering the chariot of the sun. In Olympia there were twelve rounds (dodekagnamptos, see Pindar, Olympian Odes, 2.50) that represented the position of the sun in the zodiac. Cassius Dio relates that the Roman circus represented the sequence of the four seasons.

9. These Roman games are connected with analogous traditions found in other Inda-European stocks. During the feast of Mahāvrata, which was celebrated in ancient India during the winter solstice, a representative of the white and divine Aryan caste fought against a representative of the dark caste of the śūdras for the possession of an object symbolizing the sun. In an ancient Nordic saga we find the periodic combat between two knights, one riding a white and the other a black horse, in the proximity of a symbolic tree.

10. “The concourse of demons,” in Tertullian, De spectaculis, 8.

11. Macroblus, The Saturnalia, 1.17.25. See also the Platonic saying: “Their victory [the Olympian winners] is the nobler, since by their success the whole commonwealth is preserved.” Republic, 465d.

12. 1. Tertullian, De spectaculis, 25.

13. Yasht, 13.23–24; 66–67.

14. Zend Avesta, trans. S. Darmesteter, in Sacred Books of the East, ed. M. Moeller (Oxford, 1883), 179.

15. The name of yet another priestly college (the Salii) is usually derived from salire or saltare (“to climb” or “to jump”). According to the Muslim mystic Jelaluddin Rumi, “He who knows the power of dance dwells in God, since he knows that love slays.”

16. E. Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquities grecques et romains d’apres les textes et les monuments, 6.947. The Cureti, armed dancers who engaged in orgies (arkesteres aspidephoroi), were regarded as demigods endowed with the power to initiate and also as the “child’s rearers” or pandotrophoi (See J.E. Harrison, Themis [Cambridge, 1912], 23–27), that is, as the mentors of the new principle that emerges through similar experiences.

17. E. Saglio, Dictionnaire, 6.944.

18. The Nordic view, according to which battles are won thanks to the Valkyrie, expresses the idea that the outcome of a fight is determined by these powers rather than by human strength in a materialistic and individualistic sense. In the ancient Roman world we often find the idea of the manifestation of a transcendent power. This manifestation was sometimes expressed through the voice of the god Faunus that was heard by the troops before a battle and that filled the enemy with a holy terror. We also find the idea that it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice a leader in order to actualize this presence, according to the general meaning of ritual slayings; this was the rite of devotio, the sacrifice of the leader that unleashed infernal powers and the genius of terror onto the enemy. The minute the leader died, the panic and horror that corresponded to the power liberated from the body was manifested; this horror could be compared to the herfjoturr, the panic and terror that were magically transmitted by the unleashed Valkyrie to the enemy. One of the last echoes of similar meanings was found in the Japanese kamikaze during World War II; the word kamikaze referred to the suicide pilots unleashed against the enemy, and it means “divine wind.” On the fuselages of their planes there was the inscription: “You are gods who are free from all human yearnings.”

19. See the enigmatic saying in the Koran (2:153): “Do not say that those who were slain in the cause of Allah are dead; they are alive, although you are not aware of them.” Plato also wrote: “And of those who are slain in the field, we shall say that all who fell with honor are of that golden race, who when they die, according to Hesiod, ‘Dwell here on earth, pure spirits, beneficent, Guardians to shield us mortal men from harm.’” (Republic. 468e).

20. Cassius Dio, Roman History, 45.7.

21. Dionysius of Halicamassus, 1.32.5.

22. Cicero, De natura deorum, 2.3.8; Plutarch, Life of Romulus, 1.8.

23. Livy, History of Rome, 17.9; 31.5; 36.2; 42.2. Plutarch tells us: “To such a degree did the Romans make everything depend upon the will of the gods, and so intolerant were they of any neglect of omens and ancestral rites, even when attended by the greatest success, considering it of more importance for the safety of the city that their magistrates should reverence sacred things than that they should overcome their enemies.” Marcellus, 4.4.

24. Macrobius, Saturnalia, 3.9.2. Servius, Ad Aeneidem, 2.244.

25. Herodotus, The Persian Wars, 8.109.19.

26. In savage populations we still find characteristic echoes of these views, which should not be considered “superstitious” provided they are properly contextualized and interpreted. According to these populations, war, in the last analysis, is a confrontation between warlocks. Victory goes to those who have the more powerful “war medicine” with every other apparent factor, including the equal courage of the warriors, being just a consequence.

27. G. De Giorgio, “La contemplazione e l’azione,” La Torre, no. 7 (1930).

28. Around the year A.D. 506, during the reign of Emperor Athanasius, a Catholic bishop proposed to an Arian bishop to undergo the test of fire in order to determine which one of the two faiths was the true one. After the Arian refused, the Catholic entered the fire and exited unscathed. This power was also attributed to the priests of Apollo: super ambustam ligni struem ambulantes, non aduri tradebantur says Pliny (7.2). The same idea is also found on a higher plane: according to the ancient Iranian idea, at the “end of the world” all people will have to go through a fiery current; the “righteous” will not be harmed but the evil ones will be consumed by the flames. Bundahesh, 30.18.

29. I said “until recently” because modern metapsychical researches have established the existence of paranormal powers latent in man that can become objectively, manifested and modify the network of physical and chemical phenomena. In addition to the fact that it would have been unlikely for the practice of “divine judgment” to be continued for such a long time if no extranormal phenomenon were ever produced, the said metapsychical findings ought to modify the common opinion regarding the “superstitious” variations of the so-called divine trials.