Re: Judgement Imagery Pre-Christian?

Date: 04 Mar 2003 21:48:50 GMT
Newsgroups: alt.magick
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Cicero (106-43 B.C.) believed in life after death and considered
i as the only true life. Influenced by Plato, he emphasizes that
we ought to wait for death without fear, because death introduces
us into a better life, since the soul is immortal. Sometimes Cicero
writes that we should not end our life without reason. Other times
he agrees with the Stoics who accepted suicide when there was
a serious reason. While he usually believes in the immortality of
the soul, he also expresses serious doubt about it because,
according to him, death puts out the very life of the soul!
Horace, the lyric poet (65 B.C. - 8 A.D.), indicated his desire
for immortality and expressed the certainty that he defeated
death through his cultural work. He wrote: I have completed
a monument that endures more than bronze and is more
magnificent than the royal tombs of the pyramids, a monument
that neither the eroding rain nor the wild north wind, neither the
innumerable array of years nor the passage of time can destroy.
" I shall not altogether die, but a mighty part of me shall escape
the Libitinam (Leventine Aphrodite), i.e. the death-goddess (The
Leventine Aphrodite was the goddess of funerals and death. In
her temple were the Libitanarii, that is, those who bury the dead.
In a paradoxical manner Aphrodite is related to Persephone,
that is, life to death!). On and on shall I grow, ever fresh with
the glory of after time". Horace also expressed, after Plato, an
instructive requirement concerning death: "Consider that each
day is the last one that will rise for you".
The same idea was expressed more emphatically by Marcus
Aurelius who said: "The perfection of morality is in living every
day as if it were the last, without palpitations and without
hypocricy". For the Stoic Marcus Aurelius (121-180 A.D.)both
the body and the soul are mental and corruptible elements,
while the mind is a fragment of God, with a spiritual and
immortal nature that returns to Him. It is obvious that this
Stoic philosopher was influenced by the thought of Plato and
Aristotle.
Also, influenced by Plato is the Stoic Seneca, who put an
end to his life in 65 A.D. because he had been discovered
as having taken part in a conspiracy against Nero. Seneca,
who has been criticized as unstable and hypocritical,
considered the soul to be "sacred" and "eternal", and the
body to be "the prison" of the soul.
So, as you see, all preChristian thought is subject to fate!