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Using Drugs to Cheat Old Age: The Daughters of Pelias and the Emblems of Zoroastrian Immortality by David George Phelps (Paperback / softback, 2015)

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This book, which takes its rise from the graphic, and indeed gruesome, tale of the daughters of Pelias and their deluded dismemberment of their aged father in the vain hope of conferring immortal youth upon him, attempts to begin to explore anew the role and meaning of the Greek myths, and what light they can throw on or have thrown on them by the w revived discipline of comparative Indo-European religion and mythology, revivified and re-established on new foundations during the last century by the patient and assiduous labours of Georges Dumezil and a small band of co-workers, without the dubious aids of psychoanalytical progstication or bellelettristic rhapsody. Reflecting on this myth it appeared to me that, whereas in some cases immortality might be achieved by other means - by immersion in the elements of water (or at least, in certain particular waters) or fire, or by simple translation at the behest of the gods, the main medium for achieving immortality by means of operant magic that seemed to be contemplated in the classical world (whether honestly and successfully, as in the case of Aeson, or fraudulently and unsuccessfully, as in the case of Pelias) was by the use of magical herbs. And so it further occurred to me that this fact might offer some explanation, if the ancient Iranians had thought about these matters in much the same way as the ancient Greeks, of the otherwise rather puzzling fact that the member of the six principal Zoroastrian Amesha Spenta or Beneficent Immortals that represented the idea of Immortality, Ameretat, should have had as its emblematic concrete symbol The Plants, leading to more extended reflections on the role of those mysterious and ambiguous entities kwn to the Greeks as pharmaka, to the Romans as venena, and to us as 'drugs', that can kill you or cure you or render you insane, yet that are culled from the apparently incuous natural vegetation of the woods, the fields, and the mountains, and that supply the essential foundations both of medicine and of witchcraft and sorcery alike. Discussion of the paired Zoroastrian immortals Haurvatat and Ameretat, however, led inevitably to a consideration of the near-homonymous errant Islamic angels Harut and Marut; and the story of these angels bore such marked similarities to that of Susanna and the Elders in the biblical Apocrypha that one was inevitably also led on to consider those two stories together. And hence the genesis of the present little mograph, which is perhaps by way of a kind of conceptual archaeology conducted by imaginative reconstruction, offering a tentative explanation of Iranian facts by the indirect means of an investigation into the classical Greek and Roman data that can be presumed to be parallel to them.

Product Identifiers

Publisher
Createspace
ISBN-10
1511727233
ISBN-13
9781511727235
eBay Product ID (ePID)
224987941

Additional Product Features

Content Note
Black & White Illustrations
Author Biography
David Phelps was educated at St Clement Danes GS, Hammersmith and Merton College, Oxford. In addition to comparative Indo-European religion, mythology and conceptual structures his other interests include the relations between language and thought, linguistic philosophy and non-Indo-European languages such as Mandarin and Magyar, the classical languages and civilizations, and verse forms and verse translation.
Format
Paperback / Softback
Language
English
Author(s)
David George Phelps
Date of Publication
09/08/2015
Format Details
Trade Paperback (US) ,Unsewn / Adhesive Bound
Subject
Religion: Comparative, General & Référence
Imprint
Createspace
Country of Publication
United States

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Using Drugs to Cheat Old Age: The Daughters of Pelias and the Emblems of Zoroastrian Immortality by David George Phelps (Paperback / softback, 2015)

About this product

Product Information

Product Identifiers

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