Feeling himself to have been misrepresented by history, the wine-god has retired to Tuscany to write his memoirs. This book is therefore his book and presents his personal view of the world, recounted with the detachment of an old man looking back on events of his life. By way of illustrations there are recipes, whose ingredients Bacchus associates with the various topics under discussion and whose method of preparation reflect the culinary practices of the relevant ages.
[indent]Each chapter begins with a poetic vignette (original meaning: a design of vine-leaves and tendrils) whilst among the numbered sketches of which it is composed, there are the starters, main courses and deserts of a historical meal.
[/indent]
Chapter 1 [1-6]
[indent]Bacchus' wine cellar, the Etruscans, hepadoptry, haggis, birth, Arrosto di Angello Etrusco, childhood and the invention of wine. Castagnaccio Toscano.
[/indent]
Chapter 2 [7-11]
[indent]The origins of the Etruscans, the births of Tages and Hercules, Etruscan Lore and wine, Cariofi in Umido, the Bacchanalian scandals, Bemraphye con Finocchio, Lightening, Prometheus' theft and punishment, betrothal to Ariadne, Nozze di Ariadne.
[/indent]
Chapter 3 [12-21]
[indent]Women and wine in the Ancient world, the fall of Veii, the legendry thirst of Rome, Tartuffo al Vino, Roman wine and wine-making techniques, Arrosto di Lepre, the quest for sweetness and the attendant lead in Roman wine, wine and hepadoptry, Pera Apicuis.
[/indent]
Chapter 4 [22-28]
[indent]Greek symposiums, Olive in Salamoia, sacrifices, dreams, prophesy and the liver, Fegato all Apicius, the Orphic heresy, the birth of Zeus and the survival of the Etruscan soothsayer until the 4th century AD, Pelanos.
[/indent]
Chapter 5 [29-40]
[indent]The creation, decadence in Ancient Rome and Augustus' measures against it, Cotechino del Mirto, Christianity, the first sacrifices, on death and rebirth, Medieval wine, the goddess Hecate, the Renaissance and its wine, Limonia, Renaissance Neoplatonism, Codognato, the Mysteries at Eleusis.
[/indent]
Chapter 6 [41-50]
[indent]Chianti, the pastoral tradition in poetry, Roman and Renaissance methods of farming, Neoplatonic theory and hepadoptry, Bianco Mangiare, Roman and Renaissance Banquets, Terrina Blanchiere con Animella,Polpetta e tartuffo, Zeus' cleansing of the heavens, Picza Figliata, the Renaissance magnus and methods of union with a diety.
[/indent]
Chapter 7 [51-59]
[indent]Hepadoptry and the fall of Ophion, Renaissance eating habits, Tortelloni di Zucca, the art of memory, Anguilla in Umido, Giordano Bruno, a definition of consciousness, the popularity of Eastern cults in Ancient Rome, the goddess Isis, Panforte Isis, Lucius Apuleius.
[/indent]
Chapter 8 [60-67]
[indent]The dating of the 'Corpus Hermeticum', the Florentine lethargy of the 17th C., the art of memory adapted to science, Salmagundi, tarot, hepadoptry and the art of memory, the invasion of the new crops, the invention of the pie, Torta Francesca di Fagiano, a history of farming in Tuscany during the 17th and 18th centuries, the salmagundi, Crostata Frangipani.
[/indent]
Chapter 9 [68-76]
[indent]The impossibility of marrying Ariadne, sexuality in Ancient Greece, Zuppa di Ostrica, the sexual attitudes and tyranny implicit in science, the passing of the age of innocence, the rites of Cybele and repentance, Salmone al Champagne, Champagne, Bavarios alla Crema, the rites of Demeter.
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Chapter 10 [77-86]
[indent]19th C. cooking in France, on Tartatus and death, Chartreuse di Pernice, Etruscan burial practices, the rediscovery of the Etruscans, Caneton Rouenais àla Presse, the bronze liver of Piacenza, the crises of oidium, phylloxera and mildew, Baron Bettino Ricasoldi and Chianti, Pesca Melba, Canton Rouenais àla Presse.
[/indent]
I am posting a few pages here, although this entire work should be copied to this site but that is up to the administrators of this site. This is very rich in ancient history and the so called mythological. I had a difficult time finding a link to this, and that I believe this site will no longer be available for too much longer, thus I recommend that if anyone likes this to copy every page and store on floppies or disk. Here are a 60 to 62 Enjoy!
A modern rite for an old world: into a glass jar carefully pack a set of tarot cards, a sheep or goat's liver and a dead snake. The liver should enclose the cards and the snake be coiled around them both. The jar should then be filled with formalin, sealed and kept in a kitchen or larder.
[60]
At the beginning of the fifth century AD, as the Ancient World was approaching the last stages of collapse, a young lawyer was engaged in writing a work which was to preserve for the Medieval Ages an outline of the seven liberal arts. This was the De Nuptis Philologiae et Mercurii et de septem artibu liberalibus libri novem, by Martianus Capella. The first two books of the work recount the wedding of the nymph, Philogia, to Mercury, messenger of the gods. The gods are summoned by Jupiter from out of the sixteen regions of the sky and are invited to attend the wedding. As a present, Philogia is given the seven liberal arts, grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, music and astronomy, personified as women, and the rest of the work is taken up with the description and definition of these women and their attributes. Grammar is old, bearing a knife with which to remove grammatical error. Rhetoric is tall and beautiful, with a dress embroidered with figures of speech and carrying weapons to combat her adversaries. The books of the seven liberal arts thus come complete with memory images for their remembrance and the technique of memory is discussed briefly in the book on rhetoric. Had his book not been written at a time when the whole civilised world was in decay, these personifications might well have become minor deities, assisting the muses in their work, but as it was, Capella's work was lucky to survive the Dark Ages at all.
At the time of his return to Italy and subsequent arrest by the Inquisition, Giordano Bruno too, was planning a book on the seven liberal arts. Had he been able to write it, it would have given an outline of the place of the arts in the Bruno's perception of the Macrocosm and he would have doubtless engraved images of the arts onto his memory and like Capella, treated them as minor deities. In any case, we may be sure that under astronomy, Bruno would have presented a heliocentric account of the sun's movement. Bruno's heliocentricism came by way of Copernicus, but Copernicus' heliocentric theory was prompted by Capella, and in his writings Copernicus quotes from the De Nuptis Philologiae et Mercurii. However where Copernicus, under pressure from the Inquisition recanted his beliefs, Bruno refused.
At first we gods welcomed the return to heliocentricism and like Bruno, our reasons were theological not scientific. But as men became more and more obsessed with the "natural sciences", we saw how their arrogance was growing with each new phenomena quantified by these cold formula. Once again the world was being deprived of its inherent divinity. Where the latter-day Romans had been intent on desecrating moral standards, the efforts of the seventeenth century were now directed towards the implementation of a systematically heartless materialism.
Renaissance Hermeticism was founded partly on the works of Plato and the Neo-platonists but also on a group of texts known as the Corpus Hermeticum. From these latter texts came the urgency of the argument for the need of a religious reform, for they were thought of by Renaissance humanists, as being much older than either Christianity or the Judaic tradition. In reality though, they were written in the early centuries AD, sometime before Capella wrote his De Nuptis. Following the correct dating of the Corpus Hermeticum in 1614, by methods which Renaissance humanists themselves had developed, this argument was seen as effectively undermined.
The matter had been brought to a head with the publication, between 1588 and 1607, of Cesare Baronius' Annales Ecclesiastici. This was a Counter-Reformation reply to the Protestant view of the Church's history. The first volume dealt with Gentile prophets, among whom were Hermes Trismegistus, the supposed author of the Corpus Hermeticum, and the Sibylline Oracles of Rome. These Gentile prophets, it was claimed, had foreseen the birth of Christ and it was these claims that Isaac Casaubon set out to attack in his De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticis exercitationes XVI. One of the fore-most scholars of his day, he had been invited to England by James I specifically to undertake the task of replying to Baronius. De Rebus points out the errors in the first half of the first volume of Baronius' text, suggesting that the texts of the Corpus Hermeticum were forged by early Christians in an attempt to make their doctrines more palatable to non-believers. Though the Corpus Hermeticum is reminiscent of Plato, there is no mention, Causabon pointed out, of Hermes Trismegistus in either Plato, Aristotles, or any of the main pagan authors. The texts also mention such latter-day phenomena as the Pythian Games and Phidias and quote from a number of late Greek authors. Finally, they are written in a late style, with a late vocabulary. Now, although the dating of the texts to the early centuries AD, is accepted, the suggestion of Christian authorship is no longer taken seriously and how much of their content is of genuinely ancient origin is still a matter of discussion.
With the rise of scientific materialism, the art of memory was transformed from a method of encyclopaedic assimilation into a method of investigation and enquiry. In the course of this transformation, the qualities and attributes on which sympathetic magic depends, were stripped away, to be replaced with "quantity". In place of the symbols and signs of the hermetic philosopher, scientists were now substituting number. The concentric circles of ascending hierarchies were thought of as being connected not by magic and sympathetic attraction but by cause and formulae. Thus in the centre of the scientist's world is the first cause, the one quality by which all else is explained. With this model, the scientist sets out not with the idea of absorbing into himself the order of the world in the hope that he might stumble upon some reflections of its divinity; but rather with the intention of reducing all he sees to a set of formulae. The hermetic philosopher, by memorising the hierarchies of the gods and their respective areas of influence, could, by contemplation reproduce all their varying combinations, enabling him to ascend to the level of the mens, where he would be rewarded with a vision of his goddess. But the scientist, if he were to carry out the same experiment, would see only himself and being ignorant of his nature would assume himself to be as a god. Then like Ophion and the latter-day Romans he would succumb to conceit and arrogance, for his system is not based on love but on the lust for power.
Salmagundi
Sharp Foods:
Anchovies
fresh or pickled Lemon
Pickles
fresh Herbs
a Sauce or Dressing
Bland Foods:
cooked White Meats eg., Chicken,Veal, Fish, etc. hard-boiled Eggs, Whites and Yolks separated, boiled Onions, whole if small, sliced if large Vegetables, raw or cooked as necessary, with as many different colours as possible, eg. Artichoke Hearts, Mushrooms, Lettuce, Beetroot, Cucumber, Celery, soft Cheese
To pickle vegetables: prepare the vegetable by slicing, shredding etc. Bring to the boil a brine solution strong enough that it will support an egg and simmer the vegetable for one minute. Then remove from the brine and leave to dry. In an earthenware vessel make enough pickle to cover the vegetable by boiling vinegar with some bruised ginger, white pepper, all spice, tumeric and shallots. Stirring with a wooden spoon, boil for five minutes and leave to cool a little before pouring over the vegetables. When completely cool seal and store, topping up with vinegar as necessary, so as to keep the vegetables covered.
To pickle lemons: cut the rind of the lemons as if quartering but piercing the fruit just a little. Pack salt into the openings and stand upright in a container. Turn three times a day and baste with the liquid that emerges until tender. Decant the brine and boil with enough vinegar to cover the lemons, adding a bruised ginger stem, some black pepper and mustard seed. Put the lemons into an earthenware jar and whilst still boiling, pour the pickle over them. Once cool, cover and store, topping up as the vinegar evaporates. Pickled lemons ought to be kept for at least a year before being used; if required before then they should be baked in a cool oven for six hours.
Mince, slice, shred or chop the ingredients as appropriate. On a large plate, using a system of concentric circles divided into segments, arrange the different foods around a small dish in the centre, alternating bland with sharp and with the colours contrasting as much as possible. In the central bowl place the cheese, sauce, or dressing. Decorate with fresh herbs, such as parsley, basil, etc. and place in the centre of the table.
Apart from its ornamental value, salmagundi is a useful way of using up leftovers and the word may be used metaphorically to refer to a miscellaneous collection of things.
[63]
From the point of view of the survival of the Hermetic tradition, a major breakthrough was made when the magus's memory images were removed from their concentric circles and printed onto cards, to result eventually, in the seventy-eight cards of the tarot pack. Initially intended as a teaching aid to help students engrave upon their memories the diverse genuses of the mens, it was soon discovered that these cards could also be used as a divinatory tool. Although the images on the tarot cards do invoke the spiritus of the gods, the attraction is seldom of a strong enough nature to actively influence which cards the Querent lays down and which he does not. Rather, the effect of the cards is on the Querent's mind, where the spiritus of the gods, drawn down by the images he selects, can induce changes in a person's life, especially if they are strengthened by meditation. In laying down the cards the Querent is quite literally mapping out his destiny, as, if he reflects upon the cards that he has selected and their meaning, they will in turn affect him.
Based on the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm, the twenty-two cards of the tarot pack's major arcana, arranged in their correct order, tell the story of the year king's annual trial and sacrifice. The correct order of the cards is obtained by arranging them around the liver, with the cards illustrating the nature of the gods against whose houses they are placed. This shows the role the sixteen gods of the outer region play as the year king is betrothed to his goddess and in the course of the year, passes through the stages of Fool, Hanged Man and Hermit, before finally being united with his bride as the Magician. This symbolic journey takes the king through the four quadrants of the sky, where the celestial gods, earthly deities, under-world gods and the powers of fate reside. As the king does not become the magician until he has completed his journey and been sacrificed, it is only in the aspects of Fool, Hanged Man and Hermit that Ophion can tempt him. Hence three times in each season, Ophion accosts the king and attempts to subdue him in each of his three different aspects. It was for this reason that, after slaying Ophion at Delphi, Apollo decreed that from then on, the sky and the year should be divided into twelve regions as opposed to the previous sixteen. Despite his decree, the Etruscans continued in their use of the system based on sixteen and this was why the Roman commander, at the beginning of the final offensive against Veii, prayed not only to Juno but also to Apollo, promising both gods greater glory should they help him in bringing about the city's downfall. And it was Apollo, catching us other gods off our guard, who descended one night upon a haruspix in a cloud of thusia and chanted that fateful prophecy which lead to the city's fall. Thereafter it only remained for Juno to guide the Romans to the tunnel in the rock and the sixteen regions of the sky were destined to become a secret known only to the few.
In the liver and in the sky, the Etruscan year commences in the North, with Janus and Auora. While Aurora prepares to herald in the dawn of the New Year, Janus looks both forward and back, surveying the year that has passed and the year that is to come. This is the time when the king is betrothed to his goddess and is shown in tarot by the card of the Lovers. But the king's betrothed, the Empress, demands that he prove his love for her and sends him on a journey. On the bronze liver of Piacenza, the card of the Empress corresponds with the house of Juno and Mae, or Maia, the Mother of All Things. But before he descends to earth, the king is instructed in Justice by Minerva (called Tecum by the Etruscans) and must defeat Ophion in his guise as a bull. Then searching for a way down to earth he seeks advice from Lvsa, the Highpriestess of the Great Mother. She directs him to Ethausva, the goddess of birth. In tarot, Ethausva is the Star and represents inspiration, blessing and the hope of renewal. With her help, under the warming rays of the Sun, the king finally descends into the earthly world entering my house as the Fool. After immoderate celebrations he is taught Temperance by Silvanus, the god of fields, woodlands and pastures. Later, driving Laran's Chariot he learns to master opposites and combines apparent foolishness with wisdom so that at harvest time, having defeated the lion of summer, he himself is reaped in with the corn as the Hanged Man. This takes place under the influence of the Moon, in the house of Consus, the male god of harvests, shown in the tarot pack the Highpriest. Thus the king enters the underworld, where he meets Death, whom the Etruscans called Cel. In some tarot packs, the moon is shown with a scorpion, this being the form in which Ophion appears to the king at the beginning of Autumn. But after facing Death, Alpan, one of Venus' lasas, blows the trumpet of Judgement and the king is summoned to a higher plane, while Alpan's companions defeat Ophion in his guise as a scorpion, with their perfume and incense. From Cul, the mother of death, the king learns Fortitude after which Vetis, the Devil, guides him towards the quadrant of Fate and Destiny. The king is now the Hermet, holding a staff of wisdom in his left hand and a lantern in his right. In this, the last stage of his journey, he sees the Wheel of Fortune (Cilens) and strengthened with Fortitude confronts his destiny and is able to defeat Ophion in his guise as a snake. The final two apparitions of Ophion are easily defeated by invoking Jupiter (Tins) and Destiny (Thufltha), through whose houses he will pass. The king thus meets the Emperor of tarot, who guides him to the Tower. This, symbolises the powers of fate and destiny and the card denotes a sudden change in the Querent's life. Imprisoned in the Tower, the king prepares to meet the bride and goddess, whom he has been seeking all along. When released by a bolt of lightening the king goes willingly to sacrifice. Brought round, full circle back to the card which announced his betrothal, the king has now proven himself and as the Magician attains a beatific vision of the World. These last two cards, which together represent the king's sacrifice and wedding, no longer belong to the circle of other cards, for the circle is already complete and the king has ascended to the level of the mens to be united, if only briefly with his bride.
The card of the World usually features a goddess dancing within a circle of completion or a wreath of victory. Sometimes she is accompanied by the four symbols of the evangelists, this being a corruption of the original symbols of bull, lion, scorpion and snake. These were changed to disguise the hermetic content of the cards, just as the High Priest and Priestess are often called the Pope and the Popess. The goddess of the World symbolises spiritual attainment, achievement, equilibrium, completion and fulfilment and this includes, of course, mastery of the tarot pack itself. For tarot, as a divinatory system of images not only aids the memory but also aids the intelligence and foresight in ascertaining what is and what is to come. Following Cicero's definition of prudence in De Inventione, we may conclude that the practising of tarot, constitutes for the magician, the exercising of prudence. Hence, although Justice, Temperance and Fortitude are represented in tarot, Prudence itself is not, for Prudence consists in the knowing use of all the cards.
Though the info is very good, I have to say DO NOT post the work in it's entirety here. The link is sufficient. I'm going to lock this topic, no offense, but honestly, this link can prove invaluable to some, so I would suggest at least checking it out. And SatsUrn, I would recommend posting this in the Witchcraft Library (you've got my okay), or checking with I AM about adding it the the Ceremonial Magick forum's library, since, if there are no new posts to a topic, it gets relegated to the bowels of the forum it's in.
If you wish to discuss the book, then by all mean, go right ahead, but posting the entire work is something we don't do. Just one of those silly little things.
