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In many historical societies, the position ofkingship carried asacral meaning and was identical with that of ahigh priest andjudge.Divine kingship is related to the concept oftheocracy, although asacred king need not necessarily rule through his religious authority; rather, the temporal position itself has a religious significance behind it. The monarch maybe divine,[1]become divine,[2]orrepresent divinity to a greater or lesser extent.[3]
Sir James George Frazer used the concept of the sacred king in his studyThe Golden Bough (1890–1915), the title of which refers to the myth of theRex Nemorensis.[4] Frazer gives numerous examples, cited below, and was an inspiration for themyth and ritual school.[5] However, "themyth and ritual, or myth-ritualist, theory" is disputed;[6] many scholars now believe that myth and ritual share commonparadigms, but not that one developed from the other.[7]
According to Frazer, the notion hasprehistoric roots and occurs worldwide, onJava as insub-Saharan Africa, withshaman-kings credited withrainmaking and assuring fertility and good fortune. The king might also be designated to suffer and atone for his people, meaning that the sacral king could be the pre-ordained victim in ahuman sacrifice, either killed at the end of his term in the position, or sacrificed in a time of crisis (e.g. theBlót ofDomalde).
In Africa, sacred kings are often represented as volatile and potentially dangerous wild animals.[8]: 22 TheAshanti flogged a newly selected king (Ashantehene) beforeenthroning him.[citation needed]
From theBronze Age in the Near East, the enthronement andanointment of amonarch is a central religious ritual, reflected in the titles "Messiah" or "Christ", which became separated from worldly kingship. ThusSargon of Akkad described himself as "deputy ofIshtar",[citation needed] just as the modernCatholicPope takes the role of the "Vicar of Christ".[9]
Kings are styled asshepherds from earliest times, e.g., the term applied toSumerian princes such asLugalbanda in the 3rd millennium BCE. The image of the shepherd combines the themes ofleadership and the responsibility to supply food and protection, as well as superiority.
As the mediator between the people and the divine, the sacral king was credited with special wisdom (e.g.Solomon orGilgamesh) or vision (e.g. viaoneiromancy).
Study of the concept was introduced bySir James George Frazer in his influential bookThe Golden Bough (1890–1915); sacral kingship plays a role inRomanticism andEsotericism (e.g.Julius Evola) and some currents ofNeopaganism (Theodism).The school ofPan-Babylonianism derived much of the religion described in theHebrew Bible from cults of sacral kingship in ancientBabylonia.
The so-called British and Scandinavian cult-historical schools maintained that the king personified a god and stood at the center of the national or tribal religion. The English "myth and ritual school" concentrated on anthropology and folklore, while the Scandinavian "Uppsala school" emphasized Semitological study.
A sacred king, according to the systematic interpretation ofmythology developed by Frazer inThe Golden Bough (published 1890), was aking who represented asolar deity in a periodically re-enactedfertility rite. Frazer seized upon the notion of a substitute king and made him the keystone of his theory of a universal, pan-European, and indeed worldwide fertility myth, in which a consort for theGoddess was annually replaced. According to Frazer, the sacred king represented the spirit of vegetation, a divineJohn Barleycorn.[citation needed] He came into being in the spring, reigned during the summer, and ritually died at harvest time, only to be reborn at thewinter solstice to wax and rule again. The spirit of vegetation was therefore a "dying and reviving god".Osiris,Dionysus,Attis and many other familiar figures fromGreek mythology andclassical antiquity were re-interpreted in this mold (Osiris in particular is conspicuous in this as he was a figure of Egyptian mythology). The sacred king, the human embodiment of the dying and reviving vegetation god, was supposed to have originally been an individual chosen to rule for a time, but whose fate was to suffer as asacrifice, to be offered back to the earth so that a new king could rule for a time in his stead.
Especially in Europe during Frazer's early twentieth century heyday, it launched acottage industry of amateurs looking for "pagan survivals" in such things as traditionalfairs,maypoles, and folk arts likemorris dancing. It was widely influential inliterature, being alluded to byD. H. Lawrence,James Joyce,Ezra Pound, and inT. S. Eliot'sThe Waste Land, among other works.
Robert Graves used Frazer's work inThe Greek Myths and made it one of the foundations of his own personal mythology inThe White Goddess, and in the fictionalSeven Days in New Crete he depicted a future in which the institution of a sacrificial sacred king is revived.Margaret Murray, the principal theorist ofwitchcraft as a "pagan survival," used Frazer's work to propose the thesis that manykings of England who died as kings, most notablyWilliam Rufus, were secret pagans andwitches, whose deaths were the re-enactment of thehuman sacrifice that stood at the centre of Frazer's myth.[10] This idea used byfantasy writerKatherine Kurtz in her novelLammas Night.
ScholarsDavid Graeber andMarshall Sahlins consider a politicoreligious struggle to take place in societies, with its outcome determining the nature of the institution of kingship. In sacred kingship the king often has little political power, and is contrasted with divine kingship where the king triumphs in the politicoreligious struggle between the people and the king. A sacred king is often encumbered with rituals and used as a scapegoat for disasters such as famine and drought, however can become divine and achieve greater power.[11]
Monarchies carried sacral kingship into theMiddle Ages, encouraging the idea of kings installedby the Grace of God. See:
Many ofRosemary Sutcliff's novels are recognized as being directly influenced by Frazer, depicting individuals accepting the burden of leadership and the ultimate responsibility of personal sacrifice, includingSword at Sunset,The Mark of the Horse Lord, andSun Horse, Moon Horse.[16]
In addition to its appearance in her novelLammas Night noted above,Katherine Kurtz also uses the idea of sacred kingship in her novelThe Quest for Saint Camber.[17]
In the land of mythical China, a Divine Emperor ruled part of the region. His name was Huangdi, or the Yellow Emperor.
That kings are sacred is an anthropological and historical truism, but they are not born so, and must be made sacred by those over whom they reign.
The character of 'divine royalty' is not as marked in all traditions, and what can be seen is an approach by degrees towards another conception, that of 'royalty by divine grace'. This is what occurs in the Indo-European zone, in India and Iran, for example. [...] the sovereign is not personally 'divine'. In India, it is royalty that is divine, not the king as an individual. He is revered as a god only because hisstate and hisrole are divine.
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"English school"
"Scandinavian school"