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Updated: May 8, 2025
They are abundantly employed in magical procedures and in sacrifices; they are often identified with spirits of vegetation, any locally revered animal being chosen for this purpose; they are brought into connection with astral objects and their forms are fancifully seen in sun, moon, and constellations; they play a great rôle in apotropaic and purificatory ceremonies; and they appear in myths of all sorts, especially in the histories of gods.
The same doctrine that led him to dally with omens, to search for prophetic texts, and to append, in brackets, the apotropaic initials D.V. after every statement in his letters implying futurity, led him also to envisage his moods and his desires, his passing reckless whims and his deep unconscious instincts, as the mysterious manifestations of the indwelling God.
Some scholars have attempted to explain the difference between these two festivals on the assumption that the Parentalia represents the commemoration of the duly buried dead, the Lemuria the apotropaic right for the aversion of the unburied, and therefore hostile spirits; but Ovid has given a far more significant hint, when he tells us that the Lemuria was the more ancient festival of the two.
The Greek citizen was surrounded by a host of the eminent dead who kept him in touch with the past and offered him ideals of life. Another attitude toward the dead is indicated by the great apotropaic spring festival, the Anthesteria of Athens, the object of which was to rid the city of the ghosts that then wandered about.
+140+. But the term "apotropaic" is generally used of expulsive ceremonies in which a whole community takes part. In the simplest forms of procedure the hostile spirits are driven out of the village by shouts and blows; crowds of men rush through the streets, searching houses, expelling spirits at every possible point of ingress, and finally forcing them outside the limits of the community.
In the great Hebrew annual ceremony of atonement not only the ritual impurity of the sanctuary and the altar, but also the sin of the nation, is laid on a goat and sent away to the wilderness demon, Azazel. +143+. Examples of human apotropaic vehicles occur in the ancient civilized world.
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