Paculla Annia
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Paculla Ania was a southern priestess from Campania. According to Livy, she had largely changed the rules of Bacchanalias. To regard nothing as impious or forbidden became the very sum of the Bacchus' cult. The article states the story as told by Livius.
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Rites
In 188 BC, Paculla admitted men for the first time to participate - although it is now belived that men had participated before that. The first men to be initiated were her sons, Minius and Herennius Cerrinius. She also had order the festivities to take place by night instead of by day, and instead of three days in a year five days of initiation in each month were appointed. Finally, participants of the ceremonies were all sorts: men and women, young and old, noble and common people, free and slaves, in a freedom of wine and sex. Everything was allowed. Also a rule was accepted that no one older than twenty should be initiated as the cult preyed on the young, innocent and naive.
In the rites, men were said to have shrieked out prophecies in an altered state of consciousness with frenzied bodily convulsions. Women, dressed as Bacchantes, with hair dishevelled, run down to the Tiber with burning torches, plunged them into the water, and took them out again. The flame did not diminish, as they were made of sulphur mixed with lime.
The rites of women gradually turned into sexual orgies especially of homosexual men. The men who refused to join their conspiracy or take a part in their rites or submit to defilement, were sacrificed. They were fastened to a machine and taken to hidden caves, were they were said to have been kidnapped by the gods.
The festivities were reported to Postumius, who persuaded the Roman Senate to authorize full investigation. In 186, the Senate passed a strict law (the Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus) prohibiting Bacchanalia except under certain circumstances that required the approval of the Senate. Violators were executed.
Witch-hunt
As claimed by the historian Max Dashu already in the second century BC, major elements of the European witchcraft as described by persecutioners in the Middle Age were used to suppress a subversive religion:
- secret nocturnal meetings
- the leaders were women
- they initiated their children into the cult
- ecstatic festivities with music, dancing and cries, followed by orgies
- same-gender sexual practices
- allegiations of ritual murder and other crimes.
The elements that were not present yet are the Devil of the Christianity, as this religion has not begun yet, shapeshifting and levitation. The last two attributes were associated with the Roman mythological creature known as the strix; this creature would later be associated with witchcraft in Italy and Eastern Europe. Their fusion into the conception of a large-scale social conspiracy developed only later. Nevertheless, the mysteries led by women were already being cast as a fast spreading cult and a serious threat to society.
See also
References:
- The story of Faecennia Hispala (http://www.colorado.edu/Classics/clas2110/Faecenia.html), Titus Livius, Ab Urbe Condita, XXXIX, 8-19.
- The first Mass Hunt (http://www.suppressedhistories.net/secret_history/romanhunt.html) - the first witch-hunt as described by Max Dashu.
