meehawl

I’ve been looking for just the right xmas decorations and then I came across this: an original Roman soldier’s Sol Invictus ring. The Sol Invictus cult was a deity that Constantine pimped up in Rome as a final attempt at a compromise cult that would satisfy Christians, Mithraists, and old-school pagans. The Sol cult bequeathed many of the totems now taken as “Christian”: the cross as a religious symbol of triumph over adversity, Sunday as sacred, and most especially, a birth festival on December 25th (the “Festival of the Birth of the Unconquered Sun“). I do admire the early Roman cross motif though…

If I was feeling especially flush, I could splash out for this ceremonial Sol Invictus goblet, a veritable steal at only $35,000 or so.

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Joseph Goebbels – Nazi Reichsminister fr Volksaufklrung und Propaganda, on the idea of memes:

An idea always lives in individuals. It seeks an individual to transmit its great intellectual force. It becomes alive in a brain, and seeks escape through the mouth. The idea is preached by individuals, individuals who will never be satisfied to have the knowledge remain theirs alone. You know that from experience. When one knows something one does not keep it hidden like a buried treasure, rather one seeks to tell others. One looks for people who should know it. One feels that everyone else should know to, for one feels alone when no one else knows. For example, if I see a beautiful painting in an art gallery, I have the need to tell others. I meet a good friend and say to him: “I have found a wonderful picture. I have to show it to you.” The same is true of ideas. If an idea lives in an individual, he has the urge to tell others. There is some mysterious force in us that drives us to tell others. The greater and simpler the idea is, the more it relates to daily life, the more one has the desire to tell everyone about it.

Via WFMU.

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