I only just found out that February is named after Februus. And who is Februus, you ask? The Roman god of purifications. Associated with Hades/Pluto and the Underworld.
Tomorrow is the Ides of February, Ides being another idea that comes down to us from the Romans. To them ritual was very important, and is woven into the very fabric of time. And in some senses theirs wasn't that long ago.
2 comments:
It makes sense that Februus was a Roman god of purification as well as the name being associated with the word for fever. It looks as though it was a common reference to not just one culture.
If you feel like adventuring into the depths of wikipedia or google in general try doing a search for the term 'religious rituals'. There's a whole lot of them I hadn't begun to know about and I do know about more than a few. The Indian ones, having so many gods as they do, are myriad. I don't know how they have time for anything else.
Our culture has largely moved away from religious rituals but has found new irreligious ones that provide neither comfort nor transcendence. It's interesting to consider that although the Roman Empire may have fallen its descendents embraced Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, the two most ritualistic of the Christian religion.
That's true when you think about it. Fever is the symptom of an illness, of course, but it's also the first step of the body fighting back against infection. Thus it's connected with purification.
It's true that you can find a lot of material on religious rituals from various religions. Wikipedia even has a category on Mandaean rituals, and the number of Mandaeans in the whole world only numbers in the thousands. (In large part because they don't accept converts, I think.) India is an interesting case because Hindu is the largest world religion to worship multiple gods. Most polytheistic traditions we know of have been consigned to the past. Anyway, that must lead to a different attitude to the divine and how to best show it respect.
Neither comfort nor transcendence indeed. The rituals just become self-sustaining habits at some point. The schism between Catholicism and Orthodoxy didn't happen until 1054. Which makes me think the differences that exist between them in terms of ritual must have arisen on a regional basis first.
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