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Nekyia/Nekuia

Mistress of Corpses, of the Underworld, of the Rites of Ghosts.

There once existed an arc of stories called the Nekyia, which focused on the Underworld journey of Odysseus, but it, with the exception of the Odyssey, and most of the art depicting its events are fragmentary. Theseus too had his Nekyia, as did Orpheus. Most interestingly to me, we know that one Nekyia mentioned the family origin of Iphimedeia, a figure who may be the same as Iphigeneia, said to have been transformed in to Hekate by Artemis. 

The Nekyia is full of stories of eternal punishment. Here we see Sysiphus with is boulder among the other famous persons guilty of various crimes. It seems apparent that the storytellers and artists who communicated the story were free to change the characters of the arc in order to best suit their audience or their patrons. Thus the Gods present and the particular crimes of the background characters were altered for political and social purposes as necessary. (This is true of many of the stories which have survived, and why we have some measure of variability between accounts.) 

Ultimately however, it appears that the theme of the Nekyia was an initiatory one, suggesting elements of the process of being inducted into a Mystery Cult. As such the main character, whoever they might be, are described as heroic figures of virtue, and who, in the process of their traversing the Underworld, demonstrate their grasp of right action and right thought before the Judges of the Afterlife, Dareios, Xerxes, and Artaxerses. Their military victories are coached as moral victories, and heroic acts ennoble the person.

Nekyia can also refer to the rites of necromancy by which the dead were summoned for insight into the future, as well as the funereal rituals.

The name Nekyia has become a type for literature, in which the hero makes a journey through some symbolic underworld, and must strive for survival. It has even inspired Jungian archetypal insights.

All of which offers us some insight into why the PGM’s collaborators might have used the term to describe Hekate, that Goddess who spans all realms, but who, by the late antique era, had become largely understood as a Goddess of the Dead and Unwanted, of necromancers and cemeteries.

I call upon you, Mother of all men, /you who have brought together the limbs of Meliouchos, even Meliouchos himself, OROBASTRIA NEBOUTOSOUALETH, Entrapper, Mistress of corpses, Hermes, Hekate, [Hermes?], Hermekate, LETH AMOUMAMOUTERMYOR… - PGM III.1-164, lines, 45-49.  

The term is also found in PGM IV.2708-84, where it is instead translated as “rite of ghosts”.

IO all-powerful goddess / and IO all-guarding one; IO all-sustaining One, ZELACHNA: and SAAD SABIOTHE NOUMILLON NATHOMEINA, always KEINETH, stalwart THESEUS ONYX, prudent DAMNAMENEUS, avenging goddess, strong goddess, rite of ghosts, Persia SEBARA AKRA. – PGM IV. 2708-84, lines 2775-2781.

Hekate is, of course, often a Goddess who helps the dead make the journey into the afterlife, and who welcomes those who would otherwise wander aimlessly. Her priestesses, in the surviving stories, summon the dead and put them to task, and many of the surviving spells invoking Hekate are buried in cemeteries in order to harness the powers of the dead. Nekuia strikes me as a very fitting name for our Goddess of Three Ways.  Hail unto Hekate Nekuia! Let my words reach my Beloved Dead,  In these rites. 

 Sources:

Betz, Hans Dieter. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation: including the Demotic Spells, Chicago, 1996. Castriota, David. Myth, Ethos, and Actuality: Official Art in Fifth-century B.C. Athens, Wisconsin, 1992. Crowley, Vivianne. Jung: A Journey of Transformation: Exploring His Life and Experiencing His Ideas, Quest, 1999. Larson, Jennifer Lynn. Greek Heroine Cults, Wisconsin, 1995. Lyons, Deborah. Gender and Immortality: Heroines in Ancient Greek Myth and Cult, Princeton, 2014. Pike, David Lawrence. Passage Through Hell: Modernist Descents, Medieval Underworlds, Cornell, 1997. Rohde, Erwin. Psyche: The cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, Routledge, 2014. Smith, Evans Lansing. The Hero Journey in Literature: Parables of Poesis, Univ. Press of America, 1997.

Images:

Flaxman, John. “Odysseus in the Underworld,” pen illustration, 1792, now in the Royal Academy of Arts, via wikicommons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Flaxman_-_Odysseus_in_the_Underworld_-_WGA07912.jpg

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A larger, transparent image will be provided after purchase. Price : $40 USD NSFW Addition [Genitals/Sex Characteristics] : +$10 Note: Some characteristics have changed for the Niedeth and Myste species. Full Redraws will be and additional $25 if desired.

It isn’t hard to find information on Iakkhos, considering His identification with the ever-popular Dionysos, but try finding information on Misa, the feminine portion of the God Iakkhos.

The Orphic Hymns give us the following hymn to Mises:

The fumigation of storax. Call Thesmophorus, spermatic God [Dionysos], of various names, who bears the leafy rod: Mises [Misa], ineffable, pure, sacred queen, two-fold Iacchus, male and female seen: Illustr’ous, whether to rejoice is thine in incense offer’d, in the fane divine; Or if in Phrygia most thy soul delights, performing with thy mother sacred rites; Or if the land of Cyprus is thy care, well pleas’d to dwell with Cytheria fair; Or if exulting in the fertile plains with thy dark mother Isis, where she reigns, With nurses pure attended, near the flood of sacred Egypt, thy divine abode: Wherever resident, blest pow’r attend, and with benignant mind these labours end. - Orphic Hymn XLI, trans. Thomas Taylor

This is the Goddess who is the femininity of Dionysos. She is described as a maiden, called Kore. Asklepiades of Tragilos says she’s a daughter of Dysaules and Baubo. In the 19th century, scholars wondered if Misa was not Cybele or Persephone under an Orphic gloss. She is also understood to be one of the attendants of Demeter.

As a deity of the Orphics, Misa is sometimes understood as both male and female. Understood as both stable and generative. In spite of Her androgyny, Mise is repeatedly referred to by feminine terms. She is hardly alone in this trait. There is bearded Aphrodite, and Hermaphrodite, as well as many others.

Some think that Misa originated as a local deity, who became adopted by the mystes of Orpheus.

With Her connection with Cybele, it is possible that her origin lay in Phrygia.

Normally, I would here talk about Her cult, but the truth is that the Orphics were varied and are not a singular practice, but are rather a multiplicity that vary, centered around Dionysos and of the Two Goddesses, Demeter and Kore. Speculations are rampant. This is all made more difficult by the fact that Orphism overlapped with other groups of the day, including the Pythagoreans. Additionally, the Mystery cults held their secrets close, and so little survives that some, such as Martin West, believe that Orphism was little more than dabbling.

Orphics took food restrictions and taboos on activities that other Hellenes accepted readily. There was an emphasis on purity, much like many cults of the era. We know that incense and libations were offered, and that in Misa’s case, storax was a useful offering. More is difficult to say, though many have produced speculation and fantasy over the ages.

So we know that Mises is a Goddess with characteristics of two genders, that she is a Queen, and a powerful one at that. We know she has the quality of purity, but not much about what that really means. In light of Her possible conflation with Cybele, it seems she is a Great Mother type of deity. And we know that She receives offerings of Storax. I find myself wondering if her androgyny has not made some scholars reluctant to dig into her origins and history in more depth. Perhaps, perhaps not. It may be, that there simply is nothing that survives.

  Sources:

Theoi.com

Athanassakis, Apostolos and Benjamin Wolkow. The Orphic Hymns, Johns Hopkins, 2013. Dowden, Ken and Niall Livingstone, eds. A Companion to Greek Mythology. Wiley, 2011. Edmonds, III, Radcliffe G. Redefining Ancient Orphism: A Study in Greek Religion, Cambridge, 2013. Faber, G-S. A dissertation on the mysteries of the Cabiri; or the great gods of Phenicia, Samothrace, Egypt, Troas, Grece, Italy and Crete (etc.), Rivington, 1803. Guthrie, W. K. C. Orpheus and Greek Religion. Princeton, 1935. Harrison, Jane Ellen. Prolegomena to the study of Greek religion, University Press, 1908. Herrero de Jauregui, Miguel. Orphism and Christianity in Late Antiquity, de Gruyter, 2010. Lindsay, Jack. The Ancient World: Manners and Morals, Putnam, 1968. Nelson, Marie C. and Jean Ikenberry. Psychosexual Imperatives: their role in identity formation, Human Sciences, 1979. West, Martin. The Orphic Poems, Clarendon, 1983.

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Mystery religions, sacred Mysteries or simply mysteries, were religious cults of the Greco-Roman world, participation in which was reserved toinitiates.[1] The main characterization of this religion is the secrecy associated with the particulars of the initiation and the cult practice, which may not be revealed to outsiders. The most famous mysteries of Greco-Roman antiquity were the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were of considerable antiquity and predated the Greek Dark Ages. The popularity of mystery cults flourished in Late Antiquity; Julian the Apostate in the mid 4th century is known to have been initiated into three distinct mystery cults. Notable among these late cults was the Mithraic Mysteries.

Due to the secret nature of the cult, and because the mystery religions of Late Antiquity disappeared after the 4th century (Theodosius I closed the Eleusian sanctuaries by decree in 392 AD), the details of these religious practices are unknown to scholarship, although there are educated guesses as to their general content-

Mithraeum, a place for the worship of Mithras

Definition

The term "Mystery" derives from Latin mysterium, from Greek musterion (usually as the plural musteria μυστήρια), in this context meaning "secret rite or doctrine." An individual who followed such a "Mystery" was a mystes (a mystic) "one who has been initiated," from myein "to close, shut," a reference to secrecy (closure of "the eyes and mouth"[4]:56) or that only initiates were allowed to observe and participate in rituals. The Mysteries were thus cults in which all religious functions were closed to the uninitiated and for which the inner-working of the cult were kept secret from the general public.

Place for Dionysian worship at Pompeii

Characteristics

Mystery religions form one of three types of Hellenistic religion, the others being the imperial cult or ethnic religion particular to a nation or state, and the philosophic religions such asNeoplatonism. This is also reflected in the tripartite division of "theology" by Varro, in civil theology (concerning the state cult and its stabilizing effect on society), natural theology(philosophical speculation about the nature of the divine) and mythical theology (concerning myth and ritual).

Mysteries thus supplement rather than compete with civil religion. An individual could easily observe the rites of the state cult, be an initiate in one or several mysteries, and at the same time adhere to a certain philosophical school. In contrast to the public rituals of civil religion, participation in which was expected of every member of society, initiation to a mystery was optional within Graeco-Roman polytheism. Many of the cultic aspects of public religion are repeated within the mystery, sacrifices, ritual meals, ritual purifications etc., just with the additional aspect that they take place in secrecy, confined to a closed set of initiates.

This is important in the context of the early persecution of Christians: Christianity was seen as objectionable by the Roman establishment not on grounds of its religious tenets or cultic practice, but because early Christians chose to consider their new faith as precluding the participation in the imperial cult, which was seen as subversive by the Roman establishment.

The mystery cults offered a niche for the preservation of archaic religious ritual, and there is reason to assume that they were very conservative. The Eleusian Mysteries persisted for more than a millennium, more likely close to two millennia, during which period the ritual of public religion changed significantly, from the archaic cult of the Bronze to Early Iron Age to the Hero cult of Hellenistic civilization and again to the imperial cult of the Roman era, while the ritual performances of the mysteries for all we know remained unchanged. "They had, more often than not, come up from a barbarous underworld. They were singularly persistent. The mysteries at Eleusis near Athens lasted for a thousand years; and there is reason to believe that they changed little during that long period." For this reason, what glimpses we do have of the older Greek mysteries have been taken as reflecting certain archaic aspects of common Indo-European religion, with parallels in Indo-Iranian religion in particular, by Janda (2000).

The boiler is showing signs of your wealth from the age of 15 to 30. There is a prominent part of the face-reading, and for each width and shape, it is a sign of how your property will be run in this time period. Characteristics of the boiler can also be a sign of a personality trait.1) rectangles: This is without doubt the best shape your forehead may have in terms of happiness. This type of boiler is the width of the head and the hairline is growing in a rectangular frame. A person with this type of boiler will have tremendous success in their studies, and is intelligent. Their elders, such as parents, will be able to assist them in their endeavors.2) narrow forehead: corners are low, then broaden out to the face. As a flight of stairs. A person with this type of boiler would not have much in terms of happiness. They may have run out of money or be in a situation where money was more important than the book studies. It would be difficult for that person to rise to higher positions.3) pan with sharp hairline: In this type of boiler, points hairline down the center of the pan and form an arch. A person with this type of boiler will work a bit harder than the rest of his young age, maybe a part-time work as a necessary step to help continue studies.4) Oval Furnace: A person with a rounded hairline produces an oval forehead. For women, this means that she tends to hang out with people, she always thinks of other people, and doing things in a good moderation. In a male, this means forehead they have high expectations and be kind of picky. They can be stubborn in their careers, so that opportunities pass because of this.5) Round plate: Look to the side of the forehead and you will see a prominent curve extending outwards. A person with this type of boiler will be very fast paced. In their decision, they will fly through it. They are also very independent and brave, if they want to do something, they do so. In addition, they will not hesitate to point out others' faults.6) M-shaped pan: The hairline goes in and then out on both sides, forming an M-shaped forehead. This type of person is very interested in arts.7) Sloping forehead: glanced at the forehead, it seems that there'sa steel tilt up. This type of person is very adventurous and take big risks.8) Wild Boiler: A jagged hairline, many ups and downs. A person with this type of boiler is usually less close to their fathers.How makes your boiler suit? Of course, other facial features and their importance factor in the development of happiness.