Incantations for Initiation: Ritual Hexameters, Curse Tablets, and Sacred Rites in Classical Sicily
This article suggests that the Getty Hexameters offer evidence for a once lively world of ritual poetry used in rites of initiation. Their specific language (atelestos and hieron epos), ritual schemas (instructed concealment), intended aim (protection from harm), themes and divine cast of goddesses...
שמור ב:
| הוצא לאור ב: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/kernos, |
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| מחבר ראשי: | |
| פורמט: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| שפה: | Anglais |
| יצא לאור: |
Kernos
2025
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| גישה מקוונת: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| סיכום: | This article suggests that the Getty Hexameters offer evidence for a once lively world of ritual poetry used in rites of initiation. Their specific language (atelestos and hieron epos), ritual schemas (instructed concealment), intended aim (protection from harm), themes and divine cast of goddesses (milk, Demeter, Persephone, and Hekate), and cultic context (architecture, iconography, and ritual deposits) are examined through the lens of ritual and initiation. In contrast to a dominant paradigm that asks whether the Getty Hexameters are evidence for “magic” or “mysteries”, presuming that the two constitute alternative hypotheses, I argue that they are incantatory and initiatory. This is accomplished by reading the leaden hexameters both locally in Selinuntine precincts sacred to Malophoros and more broadly with reference to Eleusinian and Orphic myth and ritual. The Getty Hexameters are contextualized within a community of ritual practitioners in Selinous, with particular focus on the role of purification and protection from avenging spirits in the Selinuntine lex sacra and the ritual poetics of curse tablets deposited in the Malophoros precincts. The “sacred law” constitutes indirect evidence for the presence of alternative modes of arousing and appeasing haunting divine forces in the area, and the maledictions capitalized on the presence of initiations in the sanctuary via the evocation of the doomed uninitiate through the very language used in the ritual hexameters (atelestos/ateleia). |
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