The latest chapter I’m reading, "The Hebrew Bible Scapegoat: Complicating a Frazerian Typology,” explores the connections (or not) between the Greek pharmakos expulsion tradition; the Leviticus 16 goat pair—one for YHWH, one for Azazel; Frazer’s interpretation of the scapegoat; and surrogate victim concepts in Joshua 7. The gist of this chapter is that Frazer popularized the 16C through 19C misinterpretation of az, “the goat,” azel, “that goes away” (i.e. the scapegoat) as a victim saddled with the sins of a group or community.
The most surprising (and Metal) passage concerned the Leviticus 16 ritual of purification, which involves sprinkling the Ark of the Covenant with drops of YHWH's sacrificed goat’s (and bull’s) blood from the high priest’s fingers (followed by more blood sprinkling around the Tent of Meeting).
As a fantasy fiction writer, usually I think of the blood in Blood Magick as a magical power source or a substance valuable to demons or other-world beings, not as a ritual detergent. Although, now that I think a little harder, I have written a story where blood was used as part of a ritual barrier.
(Pause to wonder what demons would use somebody’s blood for, anyway... and now that I think of it, what's the magical difference between a virgin's blood and a non-virgin's blood... I mean, has there been a double-blind study with virgin and demon control groups to see if just insisting that one is a virgin (or a demon) is a placebo?)
After reading this latest chapter, my new favorite word is caprine; followed by pharmakos (the Greek expulsion ritual), which is related to the words pharmakeia (medicine) and pharmakon (drug, poison, spell).
No comments:
Post a Comment