Lions and dragons and eagles, oh my
What the dark side of royal symbolism has to say about our nature
Have you ever stopped to think about why royal crests used to bear so many natural and mythical predators?
The noble lion, the divine dragon, the fearsome eagle?
Nearly every kingdom, dynasty, and empire had some predatory mascot until The Enlightenment, after which 99% of nation-states gradually traded them in for bars, stars, and stripes.
We have all been told it’s because these animals are great defenders of their territory, possessing royal qualities like courage, power, and integrity.
But what if I told you there was another side to noble insignia?
What if the royal chimeras that flew on the flags of blue-blood houses as they marched into battle were as much meant as a threat to that house’s own subjects as it was to their enemies?
After all, predators demand prey, and they don’t much care if it comes from within their own borders or from without.
If your rulers see themselves as apex carnivores, then how might they view you?
Blood is blood, and the beast demands it.
But before you roll out the guillotine again, understand the truly horrifying secret: the beast isn’t some inbred rich kid with a crown. The beast is you.
If Rene Girard is correct, the foundation myth of every culture hides some kind of violent sacrifice.
Zeus castrates and buries Chronos.
Romulus builds Rome on the ground where he felled Remus.
The gods of the Ojibway tribe drive one of their own into the sea.
Order is built from chaos.
Social bonds emerge from transgressive acts.
The group gives way to mob mentality and acts out its violent impulses on an “other.”
The reason we have so many myths and legends? These groups need to justify and disavow over and over again. To wash themselves of their collective guilt and forget the darkness in their hearts.
Sacrifices, like the ones Robert Graves described in barely-historical-fictions like The Golden Fleece involving annual orgies and sacrifices to the harvest, were ways to act out those myths, to give the insane urges we all share deep down some semblance of meaning while also sanctifying them into rituals that could be claimed was “for the great goddess.”
New ceremonies and rituals emerged all the time, depending on how often these cultures faced crises that could be resolved through sacrifice. Nobody wants to think of themselves as a murderer, so the truth gets mythologized, while the act gets sanctified as a ceremony.
But those who remember can take charge.
One of the last instances of mythologized mob violence, Girard’s “smoking gun,” was when the Ephesians, suffering from a social malaise, stoned a homeless guy to death at the instigation of Apollonius of Tyana.
He therefore called together the Ephesians, and said: "Take courage, for I will today put a stop to the course of the disease."
And with these words he led the population entire to the the theater, where the image of the Averting god has been set up.And there he saw what seemed an old mendicant artfully blinking his eyes as if blind, as he carried a wallet and a crust of bread in it; and he was clad in rags and was very squalid of countenance. Apollonius therefore ranged the Ephesians around him and said: "Pick up as many stones as you can and hurl them at this enemy of the gods."
Now the Ephesians wondered what he meant, and were shocked at the idea of murdering a stranger so manifestly miserable; for he was begging and praying them to take mercy upon him. Nevertheless Apollonius insisted and egged on the Ephesians to launch themselves on him and not let him go. And as soon as some of them began to take shots and hit him with their stones, the beggar who had seemed to blink and be blind, gave them all a sudden glance and his eyes were full of fire. Then the Ephesians recognized that he was a demon, and they stoned him so thoroughly that their stones were heaped into a great cairn around him.
After a little pause Apollonius bade them remove the stones and acquaint themselves with the wild animal they had slain. When therefore they had exposed the object which they thought they had thrown their missiles at, they found that he had disappeared and instead of him there was a hound who resembled in form and look a Molossian dog, but was in size the equal of the largest lion; there he lay before their eyes, pounded to a pulp by their stones and vomiting foam as mad dogs do.
Apollonius, by the way, is often cited as a “Pagan Jesus” who performed similar miracles in the name of Hercules, Zeus, and others in the Greek pantheon. You can see the difference between him and Christ in how he went about this half-baked “miracle.”
The people of Ephesus are suffering from a plague (the symptoms are unclear–were people dying of meningitis? Ennui? Leprosy? Bad luck? Repressed sins?) So Apollonius has them murder one of their weakest members and convinces them during their catharsis that the victim is a witch whose corpse, a bloody Rorscharch “pounded to a pulp by their stones,” is that of a demon hound. Uh-huh, and that cloud that just went by really is Elvis.
Suffice it to say those who embody the beast embody collective raw power.
Not all cultures saw their victims as evil. Many ancient cultures, like those of Sumer and Mesopotamia, even deified their victims before they died. This is likely where many of our mythological heroes come from–sacrificial victims who were afterward declared to be demigods.
It’s also the origin of monarchy, as kings would have first been sacrificial victims marked out by the tribe. They were allowed to live anywhere from days to a year, showered with luxuries, privileges, and sex to separate them from the masses and ‘made sacred.’ Some would be dressed up as animals sacred to the tribe. Over time, such ‘divine kings’ would have been able to use their unique privileges to delay their executions indefinitely and become ‘political kings.’
Your guess is as good as mine what they did precisely to secure permanent kingship. Still, it likely involved some demonstration of their will being that of the people, i.e., an ability to carry out what everyone wants without getting ritually murdered in the process.
Such a figure would be seen as someone sent by the gods rather than someone to be received by them. Someone whose will ought to be done on earth to please heaven.
But there are limits.
A leader can direct and carry out the tribe's will, but he can’t manufacture it out of thin air. Apollonius couldn’t have directed the Ephesians to stone a beggar if there had been no plague as a catalyst.
Consequently…
The king only has as much power as the people can be convinced to grant him.
He possesses as much control over his subjects as they are willing to give up over themselves.
You’ve undoubtedly seen many clips from nature documentaries of lions ‘culling the herd’ and ‘picking off the weak.’ But there also exist videos of zebra and wildebeests who fight back to protect their young or because they refuse to be eaten.
1v1, the lions don’t fare as well.
Now imagine how much worse off the predators would be if the entire herd decided they’d had enough…
But it doesn’t happen. Because the herd doesn’t want to think, it doesn’t want any more hardship than it already has to bear.
Like the crowd that kills, they would rather forget.
Pretend instead that it’s the fault of those bears across the water, or the people of the dragon, or [insert scapegoat here].
And so the beast will continue to get its sacrifice of blood. And the people will continue pretending to be pure and virtuous.
The further we’ve gotten from the bloodletting, the more we’ve convinced ourselves of our superior morality.
But unless you’ve personally been saving lives lately, here’s a stark reminder of what’s actually changed:
Over time, human sacrifices were replaced with domesticated livestock. But we still showered these animals with garlands and paraded them through the streets before slaughtering and eating them. At the very least, we said prayers and burnt the best bits as offerings to our gods.
Strange rituals to modern eyes, perhaps. Most cows and goats, if given the choice, would rather eat grass in a field than be eaten by humans, but it was the best we could do to honor our victims.
Today, we no longer see our meat as victims. We don’t see them as anything. We’ve abstracted out the entire process so that millions of farm animals go into buildings we aren’t allowed to film (it’s illegal in many countries; look it up.) and come out as plastic-wrapped units of protein and fat.
The same can be said of how we view history. Too bright to blame wars on individuals or even people, we point today to trends and forces that make the explosion and evisceration of millions entirely predictable in retrospect. And yet, the machinery of time grinds on—a series of events resulting in human slaughter that we are powerless to do anything about.
We believe our ballots have freed us from kings and queens while decrying the fact that our politicians and livelihoods are beholden to faceless corporations.
This transference of responsibility from the many to the one, to the none, is nowhere more apparent than in our flags.
Where once stood the fearsome beasts that threatened enemies and subjects alike with violence, we now have the graphics of non-functioning TV channels.
Only the colors haven’t changed, which suggests that the beast is still there, just in better camouflage.
After all, what was the greatest lie that the devil—aka the ruler of this world—ever told again?
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Happy Halloween, everyone. Many cultures set aside special holidays to mark a blurring of the separation between the living and the dead when elements of the underworld and our world overlap. We do ourselves a great disservice by thinking it is all child’s play.
Stay safe and be responsible out there.