Brief Notes on the History of the Human Flock 1: The Pagan Era

Late Roman marble copy of a Kriophoros

by the ancient Greek sculptor Kalamis 

(5th-century BC)

 

 

Many of us have what might be termed an Animal Farm moment of revelation when we look from A to B, and from B to A, and from A to B again, but are unable to tell which is which [1].

For example, at a certain point it becomes clear that there is no real difference between a punk and a hippie and that you should never trust either. Similarly, the distinction between pagan and Christian is impossible to maintain as soon as one reads a little religious history.

 

Take, for example, the idea of a human flock ... 

 

This is something I believed to be an exclusively Christian concept, referring to the followers of Jesus who styles himself as the good shepherd - i.e., one who not only knows and cares for his sheep, but is prepared to lay down his life for them [2]. 

But, thanks to Michel Foucault, I now discover: 

 

"The idea of a power that would be exercised on men in the same way as the shepherd's authority over his flock appeared long before Christianity. A whole series of very ancient texts and rites make reference to the shepherd and his animals to evoke the power of the gods or the prophets over the peoples they have the task of guiding." [3].

 

In ancient Egypt, for example, pharaohs received the emblems of the shepherd during their coronation ceremony; Babylonian and Assyrian kings were also awarded the title of shepherd, signifying their duty to safeguard the people over whom they ruled on behalf of the gods. 

 

By contrast, the ancient Greeks weren't so keen on thinking of themselves as a flock of sheep (or their rulers as shepherds) and the theme of pastoral power seems to have occupied only a minor place in their cultural imagination - even whilst it was customary amongst sculptors to produce figures known as Kriophoroi [4].

 

Foucault writes:

 

"The Homeric sovereigns were indeed designated as 'shepherds of the peoples', but without there being much more than a trace of ancient titulature. But later the Greeks don't seem to have been inclined to make the relation between the shepherd and his sheep the model of relation that must obtain between the citizens and those who command them." [5]

 

Of course, there were exceptions to this: Plato, for example - whom Nietzsche regards as a proto-Christian, preparing the ground for a slave revolt in morals - discussed pastoral power at some length in the Statesman, when he determines to define what the royal art of commanding consists in. 

 

However, it's important to note that Plato qualifies the idea and argues that, ultimately, the modern political leader must be more weaver than herdsman; i.e., one who who is able to pull together all the complex social elements and different classes of people into a single fabric. 

 

As we will see in part two of this post, it will take "the spread of oriental themes in Hellenistic and Roman culture for the pastorate to appear as the adequate image for representing the highest forms of power" [6]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm referring here to the famous ending of George Orwell's 1945 novel, in which it becomes impossible to distinguish between pigs and humans around the card table.   

 

[2] See John 10:11-15: click here. 

 

[3] Michel Foucault, Confessions of the Flesh, trans. Robert Hurley, (Penguin Books, 2021), Appendix 2, p. 302. 

 

[4] Often intended as representations of the god Hermes, Kriophoroi were figures bearing a sacrificial ram upon their shoulders. However, the figure of a shepherd carrying a lamb, simply as a pastoral vignette, was also common in ancient Greece and known by the same term. 

      The Christians adopted the image and made it their own; the Good Shepherd being the most common symbolic representation of Christ found in early Christian art in the Catacombs of Rome (before such imagery could be made explicit), and it continued to be used in the centuries after Christianity was legalized in 313. Initially, it was probably not understood to be a portrait of Jesus. However, by the 5th century the figure had taken on the conventional appearance of Christ in Christian art; the robes, the halo, the long flowing hair, etc.

 

[5] Foucault, Confessions of the Flesh, p. 303.

 

[6] Ibid., p. 304.      

    

 

To read part two of this post - on the human flock in the Judeo-Christian era - click here.

 

 

Cat Killer / Cat Saviour

The Gayer-Anderson Cat

britishmuseum.org

 

I. The Case of Steven Bouquet

ITV recently broadcast a particularly distressing documentary about the Sussex Police investigation into the murder of several cats by security guard (and former Royal Navy gunner) Steven Bouquet, in 2018-19. 

 

Jailed for five years and three months in September 2021, Bouquet was found to have killed nine cats in total and injured seven more with a knife in and around the Brighton area, during a campaign of wilful and sustained cruelty. The police suspect he may have actually harmed or killed as many as forty cats. 

Personally, I take an ancient Egyptian line when it comes to punishing those who kill cats, but English law has no provision for capital punishment. Still, I'm pleased to report that Bouquet died in January of this year, whilst still refusing to admit his guilt and to apologise for the pain and suffering he caused.

 

May the goddess Bastet devour his soul. 

 

 

II. The Case of Robert Brantley

 

On a happier note, it's nice to know that there are kind-hearted ailurophiles like Robert Brantley in the world ...

 

Upon discovering a tiny kitten at the side of the road and fearing for its safety, Brantley decided to play the good Samaritan and rescue the abandoned creature, only to then be ambushed by a dozen other kittens hiding in the long grass, all looking for protection and meowing at his feet, as can be seen in this video on YouTube: click here.

 

Clearly surprised and a little overwhelmed, Brantley initially informs the kittens that he can't take them all. However, because he has a big heart, I'm pleased to say Brantley did take all thirteen cats home with him, where they are presently being fed and cared for. 

  

Brantley plans to keep at least two or three of the kittens - including the one he initially stopped to rescue - and distribute the rest amongst friends and neighbours in Louisana.

 

May the goddess Bastet bring blessings upon him and his family.    

 

 

Note: for a related post requesting kindness to cats, click here.  

 

External link: Cats Protection: cats.org.uk

Lipstick Traces (with Reference to the Case of Cleopatra)

Zabrena: Historically Accurate: Ancient Egypt / Cleopatra Makeup Tutorial

YouTube (8 Oct 2014): click here. 

One of the questions I find endlessly fascinating is that of nature and artifice and the nature of artifice in relation to femininity.

It's a question that invariably takes us back to Baudelaire who suggests that without makeup Woman - as a figment of the pornographic imagination and not merely as a lump of flesh with distinct reproductive organs from the male - not only fails to excite or interest, but is less than human. It is only as a cultural-cosmetic effect that she elevates herself above her animal biology and captures the hearts and minds of men who would otherwise happily make do with other pleasures.      

For as Baudelaire admits, woman is not an animal whose component parts - even when pleasingly assembled and proportioned - provide a perfect example of harmony; "she is not even that type of pure beauty which the sculptor can mentally evoke in the course of his sternest meditations". In order to cast her complex spell of enchantment, she needs to adorn and thus enhance her physical attributes. 

Take the mouth, for example: who in their right mind would ever have dreamt of kissing the lips of a mucous-lined orifice with two rows of sharp teeth - and, indeed, exploring such with their own tongue or virile member - were those lips not first painted in an irresistible shade?

For whilst a smile, betraying as it does a certain vulnerability, may attract the attention of a man, I doubt that alone would be enough to persuade to perversion. And, let's be clear about this, oral sex - which includes French kissing - is an obvious abberation, involving as it does a form of what Freud terms anatomical transgression.

Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, Isis Reborn, and a skilled fellatrix, knew exactly what she was doing when she applied crushed beetle juice in a beeswax base to her lips in order to stain them deep carmine red.

As Adam Ant once put it: She was a wide-mouthed girl ...    

See: 

Charles Baudelaire, 'The Painter of Modern Life' in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, trans. and ed. by Jonathan Mayne, (Phaidon Press, 1995): click here to read online. 

Sigmund Freud, 'The Sexual Aberrations', in Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory, trans. A. A. Brill (NY, 1910): click here to read online.

Play:

Adam and the Ants, 'Cleopatra', Dirk Wears White Sox, (Do It Records, 1979): click here to listen on YouTube.

Him With His "Tail" in His Mouth

"This said, his guilty hand pluck'd his piece, 

and as the grim Ouroboros he did feast."

I can understand Lawrence's philosophical dislike for the ancient symbol of a snake devouring its own tail. For eternal cycles, in which origins and ends are revealed to be one and the same, are abhorrent to many of us. And, like Lawrence, I prefer my serpents to have sharp fangs, moving about on the alert, heads held aloft, experiencing the world with a gentle flick of a forked tongue and dancing round the heels of Woman, not coiled up into endless self-reflexivity.

And it's this latter aspect of the ouroboros - the suggestion of self-absorption and self-satisfaction - that really troubles Lawrence I suspect. For what this ancient Egyptian symbol ultimately refers us to is not a model of infinity or primordial wholeness, but the divine practice of auto-fellatio.

In other words, him with his tail in his mouth is really a god with his cock in his mouth and I can imagine Lawrence - to whom all forms of masturbation are anathema - finding that extremely hard to swallow. Nevertheless, the fact remains that there are numerous ancient texts describing acts of oral self-stimulation; a practice favoured not only by Egyptian deities, but by those mortals devoted, flexible and well-endowed enough to also enjoy such.              

For example, in a document held by the British Museum, one can read a short poem embedded in a prose account of creation which narrates how the sun god Ra created the sibling deities Shu (god of air) and Tefnut (goddess of precipitation), by sucking himself off and spitting his semen onto the ground. Never in a million years is Lawrence going to feel comfortable with this queer act of generation.

Indeed, I think he'd sooner accept that in the beginning was the Word, than that in the beginning was a self-administered blowjob.


Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'Him With His Tail in His Mouth', in Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988).

The document I refer to held by the British Museum, is the Papyrus Bremner-Rhind, written c. 4th century BCE. Obviously, I haven't read the original - nor could I - but I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the translation and reading by Egyptologist David Lorton, whose essay Autofellatio and Ontology (1995), can be read by clicking here.