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Updated: May 23, 2025
The Lemuria in May had exactly the opposite character and belongs to the category of the "expulsion of evil spirits," of which Mr. Frazer in his Golden Bough has given so many instances. In this connection it is interesting to notice two facts which stand almost as corollaries to these beliefs.
But Vestinius, stretching his neck like a stork, whispered mysteriously, "I do not believe in the gods; but I believe in spirits Oi!" Nero paid no attention to their words, and continued, "I celebrated the Lemuria, and have no wish to see her.
Precisely what the ceremonies were which Romulus performed to appease the spirit of his brother can not now be ascertained, as there was no particular description of them recorded. But the Lemuria, as afterward performed, were frequently described by Roman writers, and they were of a very curious and extraordinary character.
+602+. Among religious ceremonies the expulsion of evil spirits was naturally attended with danger, and work was prohibited. Such was the custom in Athens at the Anthesteria and on the sixth day of the Thargelia, and in Rome at the Lemuria.
The 9th, 11th, and 13th were the days set apart for the Lemuria, the aversion of the hostile spirits of the dead, of which we have already spoken, and a similarly gloomy character probably attached to the Agonia of Vediovis on the 21st.
The ghosts, or specters of the dead that came back to haunt and terrify the living were called lemures. Hence the celebration which Romulus ordained was called the Lemuria, and it continued to be annually observed in Rome during the whole period of its subsequent history.
This double attitude is precisely that of the savage tribes referred to above. The same difference of feeling appears in the Roman cults: the manes are the friendly or doubtful souls of dead ancestors; the Parentalia is a festival in honor of the dead kin; in the Lemuria, on the other hand, the father of the family performs a ceremony at midnight intended to rid the house of ghosts.
Like many other people, they have the legend of the flood: remember, as you may say, the fall of Atlantis; but unlike us upstarts of the Fourth and Fifth Races, they have also a legend of a destruction of the world by fire and earthquake a cataclysm that lasted, they say, a hundred days. Is it a memory of the fate of Lemuria?
After the cataclysm which destroyed the works of Man of the Second Cycle, and left the survivors scattered or disorganized, awaiting the touch of the organizing urge which followed shortly afterward, there dawned the first period of the Third Cycle. The scene of the life of the Third Cycle was laid in what is known to Occultists as Lemuria.
At first, when his religion was one of fear, he regarded the dead as normally hostile, and their presence as something to be averted; this is the stage which gave birth to the Lemuria.
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