Page 67
Posted: Sun Sep 14, 2025 9:02 am
You see, the “unfolding of everything” — it will go forth from me. That there is space and time, organizing the entire space-time continuum.
“Ritual, especially the calendrical one, above all the main annual rite marking the transition from the old year to the new, is also correlated with them. The ritual annual festival in its structure reproduces the experienced crisis situation, when from chaos arises cosmos. The middle of the world performs a harmonizing role in the Universe. Mythological objects associated with the center of the world are the tree or the altar, or the throne. The corresponding mythological figures are Hestia, Apollo, the Delphic Pythia, Odin, who offered himself as a sacrifice upon the world tree, or shamans, chanting by the tree. They carry out social, cultic, informative, and other regulation of the community. The Sun governs the harmony of the celestial spheres. The priests govern the entire order in the sphere of cult, as well as of secular legislation. In the center of the Universe and in ancient Greek mythology is placed the divine necessity Ananke, governing fates. The shaman establishes concord between the world of people and the world of spirits. According to ancient Chinese conceptions, over all tribes and peoples reigns the emperor of the Middle Kingdom. Partly for this reason thus is said “stand in the middle of the ship,” — advises Pittacus to Solon, who is preparing to give new laws to the Athenians. In this case the middle is synonymous with justice, necessary for the legislator. The middle, as a harmonizing element, is the source of order and purity. At the same time the center is not only the source of cosmic harmony, but also the embryo of the Universe, the seed of the world. The middle as the generative element appears as the bearer of order and purity. Hence the representation of the central location of the primordial paradise, of the gradual corruption of the Universe as it recedes from the center, of the identification of the periphery with chaos. And also the idealization of central categories, widespread in archaic, and often also in modern moral philosophy. A vivid example of such idealization is the ancient concept of the golden mean, as well as certain ethical theories of ancient China about the middle path. Concepts and categories associated with the idea of the harmonizing center received their greatest development precisely in ancient Greece, where the very term “middle” was often synonymous with the notion of “good,” for example, in Aristotle’s Politics. In the mythological model of the world the category of the middle is fractal, since every sacralized mesocosm
“Ritual, especially the calendrical one, above all the main annual rite marking the transition from the old year to the new, is also correlated with them. The ritual annual festival in its structure reproduces the experienced crisis situation, when from chaos arises cosmos. The middle of the world performs a harmonizing role in the Universe. Mythological objects associated with the center of the world are the tree or the altar, or the throne. The corresponding mythological figures are Hestia, Apollo, the Delphic Pythia, Odin, who offered himself as a sacrifice upon the world tree, or shamans, chanting by the tree. They carry out social, cultic, informative, and other regulation of the community. The Sun governs the harmony of the celestial spheres. The priests govern the entire order in the sphere of cult, as well as of secular legislation. In the center of the Universe and in ancient Greek mythology is placed the divine necessity Ananke, governing fates. The shaman establishes concord between the world of people and the world of spirits. According to ancient Chinese conceptions, over all tribes and peoples reigns the emperor of the Middle Kingdom. Partly for this reason thus is said “stand in the middle of the ship,” — advises Pittacus to Solon, who is preparing to give new laws to the Athenians. In this case the middle is synonymous with justice, necessary for the legislator. The middle, as a harmonizing element, is the source of order and purity. At the same time the center is not only the source of cosmic harmony, but also the embryo of the Universe, the seed of the world. The middle as the generative element appears as the bearer of order and purity. Hence the representation of the central location of the primordial paradise, of the gradual corruption of the Universe as it recedes from the center, of the identification of the periphery with chaos. And also the idealization of central categories, widespread in archaic, and often also in modern moral philosophy. A vivid example of such idealization is the ancient concept of the golden mean, as well as certain ethical theories of ancient China about the middle path. Concepts and categories associated with the idea of the harmonizing center received their greatest development precisely in ancient Greece, where the very term “middle” was often synonymous with the notion of “good,” for example, in Aristotle’s Politics. In the mythological model of the world the category of the middle is fractal, since every sacralized mesocosm