[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]The Golden Bough brings together lots of bits and pieces of comparative mythology and tries to link them up. I'm wary of taking too much of it at face value for three reasons:[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]It was written at a time when the Victorians were very interested in all things comparative and hyper-diffusional, e.g. one UK PM tried to organise a hunt for Atlantis.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]It pulls in loads of comparative examples but doesn't pull them together by setting a consistent criteria on how well they should fit together to be considered valid. At the same time, it doesn't consider counter-arguments or any areas of dissimilarity.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]The sources used are at best 'weak' at times.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]I remember the section which made me shake my head when I read it:[/FONT]
“[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]T[/FONT][FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]he honour of living for a short time in the character of a god and dying a violent death in the same capacity was not restricted to men in Mexico; women were allowed, or rather compelled, to enjoy the glory and to share the doom as representatives of goddesses. Thus at a great festival in September, which was preceded by a strict fast of seven days, they sanctified a young slave girl of twelve or thirteen years, the prettiest they could find, to represent the Maize Goddess Chicomecohuatl. They invested her with the ornaments of the goddess, putting a mitre on her head and maize-cobs round her neck and in her hands, and fastening a green feather upright on the crown of her head to imitate an ear of maize. This they did, we are told, in order to signify that the maize was almost ripe at the time of the festival, but because it was still tender they chose a girl of tender years to play the part of the Maize Goddess. The whole long day they led the poor child in all her finery, with the green plume nodding on her head, from house to house dancing merrily to cheer people after the dulness and privations of the fast.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]In the evening all the people assembled at the temple, the courts of which they lit up by a multitude of lanterns and candles. There they passed the night without sleeping, and at midnight, while the trumpets, flutes, and horns discoursed solemn music, a portable framework or palanquin was brought forth, bedecked with festoons of maize-cobs and peppers and filled with seeds of all sorts. This the bearers set down at the door of the chamber in which the wooden image of the goddess stood. Now the chamber was adorned and wreathed, both outside and inside, with wreaths of maize-cobs, peppers, pumpkins, roses, and seeds of every kind, a wonder to behold; the whole floor was covered deep with these verdant offerings of the pious. When the music ceased, a solemn procession came forth of priests and dignitaries, with flaring lights and smoking censers, leading in their midst the girl who played the part of the goddess. Then they made her mount the framework, where she stood upright on the maize and peppers and pumpkins with which it was strewed, her hands resting on two bannisters to keep her from falling. Then the priests swung the smoking censers round her; the music struck up again, and while it played, a great dignitary of the temple suddenly stepped up to her with a razor in his hand and adroitly shore off the green feather she wore on her head, together with the hair in which it was fastened, snipping the lock off by the root. The feather and the hair he then presented to the wooden image of the goddess with great solemnity and elaborate ceremonies, weeping and giving her thanks for the fruits of the earth and the abundant crops which she had bestowed on the people that year; and as he wept and prayed, all the people, standing in the courts of the temple, wept and prayed with him. When that ceremony was over, the girl descended from the framework and was escorted to the place where she was to spend the rest of the night. But all the people kept watch in the courts of the temple by the light of torches till break of day.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]The morning being come, and the courts of the temple being still crowded by the multitude, who would have deemed it sacrilege to quit the precincts, the priests again brought forth the damsel attired in the costume of the goddess, with the mitre on her head and the cobs of maize about her neck. Again she mounted the portable framework or palanquin and stood on it, supporting herself by her hands on the bannisters. Then the elders of the temple lifted it on their shoulders, and while some swung burning censers and others played on instruments or sang, they carried it in procession through the great courtyard to the hall of the god Huitzilopochtli and then back to the chamber, where stood the wooden image of the Maize Goddess, whom the girl personated. There they caused the damsel to descend from the palanquin and to stand on the heaps of corn and vegetables that had been spread in profusion on the floor of the sacred chamber. While she stood there all the elders and nobles came in a line, one behind the other, carrying saucers full of dry and clotted blood which they had drawn from their ears by way of penance during the seven days’ fast. One by one they squatted on their haunches before her, which was the equivalent of falling on their knees with us, and scraping the crust of blood from the saucer cast it down before her as an offering in return for the benefits which she, as the embodiment of the Maize Goddess, had conferred upon them. When the men had thus humbly offered their blood to the human representative of the goddess, the women, forming a long line, did so likewise, each of them dropping on her hams before the girl and scraping her blood from the saucer. The ceremony lasted a long time, for great and small, young and old, all without exception had to pass before the incarnate deity and make their offering. When it was over, the people returned home with glad hearts to feast on flesh and viands of every sort as merrily, we are told, as good Christians at Easter partake of meat and other carnal mercies after the long abstinence of Lent. And when they had eaten and drunk their fill and rested after the night watch, they returned quite refreshed to the temple to see the end of the festival. And the end of the festival was this. The multitude being assembled, the priests solemnly incensed the girl who personated the goddess; then they threw her on her back on the heap of corn and seeds, cut off her head, caught the gushing blood in a tub, and sprinkled the blood on the wooden image of the goddess, the walls of the chamber, and the offerings of corn, peppers, pumpkins, seeds, and vegetables which cumbered the floor. After that they flayed the headless trunk, and one of the priests made shift to squeeze himself into the bloody skin. Having done so they clad him in all the robes which the girl had worn; they put the mitre on his head, the necklace of golden maize-cobs about his neck, the maize-cobs of feathers and gold in his hands; and thus arrayed they led him forth in public, all of them dancing to the tuck of drum, while he acted as fugleman, skipping and posturing at the head of the procession as briskly as he could be expected to do, incommoded as he was by the tight and clammy skin of the girl and by her clothes, which must have been much too small for a grown man.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]In the foregoing custom the identification of the young girl with the Maize Goddess appears to be complete. The golden maize-cobs which she wore round her neck, the artificial maize-cobs which she carried in her hands, the green feather which was stuck in her hair in imitation (we are told) of a green ear of maize, all set her forth as a personification of the corn-spirit; and we are expressly informed that she was specially chosen as a young girl to represent the young maize, which at the time of the festival had not yet fully ripened. Further, her identification with the corn and the corn-goddess was clearly announced by making her stand on the heaps of maize and there receive the homage and blood-offerings of the whole people, who thereby returned her thanks for the benefits which in her character of a divinity she was supposed to have conferred upon them. Once more, the practice of beheading her on a heap of corn and seeds and sprinkling her blood, not only on the image of the Maize Goddess, but on the piles of maize, peppers, pumpkins, seeds, and vegetables, can seemingly have had no other object but to quicken and strengthen the crops of corn and the fruits of the earth in general by infusing into their representatives the blood of the Corn Goddess herself. The analogy of this Mexican sacrifice, the meaning of which appears to be indisputable, may be allowed to strengthen the interpretation which I have given of other human sacrifices offered for the crops. If the Mexican girl, whose blood was sprinkled on the maize, indeed personated the Maize Goddess, it becomes more than ever probable that the girl whose blood the Pawnees similarly sprinkled on the seed corn personated in like manner the female Spirit of the Corn; and so with the other human beings whom other races have slaughtered for the sake of promoting the growth of the crops.[/FONT]
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Lastly, the concluding act of the sacred drama, in which the body of the dead Maize Goddess was flayed and her skin worn, together with all her sacred insignia, by a man who danced before the people in this grim attire, seems to be best explained on the hypothesis that it was intended to ensure that the divine death should be immediately followed by the divine resurrection. If that was so, we may infer with some degree of probability that the practice of killing a human representative of a deity has commonly, perhaps always, been regarded merely as a means of perpetuating the divine energies in the fulness of youthful vigour, untainted by the weakness and frailty of age, from which they must have suffered if the deity had been allowed to die a natural death.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]These Mexican rites suffice to prove that human sacrifices of the sort I suppose to have prevailed at Aricia were, as a matter of fact, regularly offered by a people whose level of culture was probably not inferior, if indeed it was not distinctly superior, to that occupied by the Italian races at the early period to which the origin of the Arician priesthood must be referred. The positive and indubitable evidence of the prevalence of such sacrifices in one part of the world may reasonably be allowed to strengthen the probability of their prevalence in places for which the evidence is less full and trustworthy. Taken all together, the facts which we have passed in review seem to show that the custom of killing men whom their worshippers regard as divine has prevailed in many parts of the world.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]Though intermingled with other Mesoamerican cultures, Aztec cosmology and religion was so different/ adapted that it's a good example of how global comparisons, in Mesoamerica and more widely, can often break down.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]At the time that made me look at the source: the Spanish, who were in the middle of trying to wipe out the indigenous religions at the time it was reported. (Both to gain control over the population and as a justification for the 'civilising' actions of the Conquest, e.g. they stuck their churches right on top of Mesoamerican 'holy sites' like Cholula). I've yet to find another source which supports this widely repeated account and, in practice, the Aztecs had a clear preference for sacrificing captives/ tribute:[/FONT]
“[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]Another story that also makes evident the idea of male dominance and the “lesser” value of women in the Mexican society took place when the Aztecs needed a “special” sacrificial victim. Motive for the sacrifice of the chief of the Culhuacans daughter according to the codex was to create a goddess of discord, or war, called Toci. The deeper motive might have been an attempt to both assert and validate the combative stance of the Aztecs in the heavily populated valley where they had chosen to live. At another level, it was an assertion of control and dominance over the women whom they took in marriage from the neighboring kingdom (Nash 1978:351). The story involves the Aztecs flaying the chief of the Culhuacans daughter and then having him come to the ceremony where her skin was worn by someone else.”[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]So, a single Aztec act of political terror, which may itself have been Aztec propaganda aimed at subduing tribute states, is probably being rewritten by the Spanish. The author certainly seems to be confused as “Then the priests swung the smoking censers round her” would have been tricky given that all Aztec censers found are open-topped and bear little resemblance to the Spaniards large ornamental incense censers. It was also more usual to flay someone when alive and it's a bit unclear how the skin would fit on anyone other than a child, which Fraser's version has being put over a grown man. [/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]Having had a look at Gary's sources, (both named and implied) ,which included the Golden Bough and Jung, it's Levi-Strauss and structuralism that seems to stand out as offering a model for classes, levels, characters largely defined by classes, “people organized . . . by examining the logical structures that underlay relationships rather than their contents,“ e.g. the hierarchy of angels/ seraphim.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]On the basis of that, I'm seeing Gary's 'White Rabbit', not as a nod or a wave to esoteric knowledge, which he was very probably aware of, but rather a nod to a modern 'initiation' and 'knowledge/ or deeper understanding', involving a structuralist and later, a structuralist and post-structuralist coalescence, which helps players to describe and structure fantasy worlds/ societies, which are then 'brought to life' by applying personal agency to the structure.[/FONT]
[FONT=Calibri, sans-serif]As no one will have read this far, I'm probably not going to have to defend that (and I decline to be sucked into Forge-land literary theory rather than scientific theory) but, to me, it adds up to a clearer understanding of what fed into D&D, while getting rid of any notion of Gary as a 'bumbling hippie who did good but tailed-off'. Instead, something of an expert in comparative mythology, a social scientist with an understanding of structure and modelling techniques, and an awareness of the tension between structure and personal agency.
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