From the Archives: Part 39 of The Self and its Sources

Caiaphas: “It is better that one should die than the whole nation be destroyed” - the economy of violence in the old sacred system. Primitive religion was indeed the opiate of the people…

From the Archives: Part 34 of The Self and its Sources

Kingship participated in the distinction between the sacred and the profane. The old sacred system is compromised by the effects of the Gospel. The novel as an early symptom of modernity reflects these effects.

From the Archives: Part 32 of The Self and its Sources

Anthropological field studies of kingship…continued. Kingship is an extended sacrificial ritual…the king is the victim with an extended sentence.

From the Archives: Part 31 of The Self and its Sources

The sacred system comes into being when the crowd gathers around the corpse of the victim.
All cultural structures are generated from that event. And one can read the traces of that event in cultural aftereffects. An anthropological case study from equatorial Africa.

From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 16

Sacrifical violence transcendentalizes desire.
The revelation of the truth about the sacrificial structures of human culture is found in the story of the crucifixion of Jesus

From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 15

A biblical echo of sacred transcendence in Numbers 25 - the righteous sacrificial act of Phinehas

From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 13

Examples of images of fanciful prestige that keep humans from slaughtering each other.

Lord of the Flies: British officer as representative of the sacrificial system - a form of transcendence.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 194

They returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the Temple blessing God.
Leaving behind the old sacred system but only under the impulse of a religious prompting.

There’s no way out.
you were born to waste your life,
You were born to this middle class life
As others before you were born to walk in procession
To the temple
Singing

Louis Simpson

NOTE: This is the final excerpt from the Poetry of Truth series. Beginning in January we will start a new series of excerpts from a presentation Gil Bailie made in 1993 entitled "Crucial Choice" focusing on stories by Isak Dinesen, "Babette's Feast", and Flannery O'Connor, "The Displaced Person".

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 185

Going back to the tomb. "Death, where is thy sting?"

Creating sacrality out of the most numinous thing around…death. The scandal of the cross.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 174

The effects of the Gospel continued: gathering and scattering.

Myth veils sacred violence so as to hide its morally troubling aspects. Myth tricks violence into spending itself on victims whose death will provoke no reprisals. To avenge a death is to reenter the sacrificial system

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 168

"If they do this when the wood is green...what will happen when the wood is dry?"

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 134

Jesus and the money changers...meddling with the sacrificial mechanism. Jesus is not attempting to reform the Temple, but replace it.
The parable of the wicked tenants.

From the Archives: Poety of Truth Part 130

Crowds and Power...


Where does Jesus get his authority?

Weeping over Jerusalem...if only you had recognized the things that make for peace...

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 117

The Moche culture of ancient Peru - a large and thriving civilization at whose center was an altar of blood sacrifice.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 100

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem…you who have killed the prophets…..How often I have desired to gather you as a hen gathers her brood"