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OPS

 

27th August

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Listen: Ops

Readings:

 

The Opiconsivia (or Opeconsiva or Opalia) Roman festival was held in honor of Ops. The Latin word consivia (or consiva) derives from conserere ("to sow"). Hence, the word Opiconsivia may be interpreted as meaning "the sowing of crops", since Ops ultimately means "crops" in the sense of "riches, goods". This word is also related to Consus, the male counterpart of Ops as "the seeder".

Both Ops and Consus were deemed chthonic (underworld) deities which made the vegetation grow. Since her abode was inside the earth, Ops was invoked by her worshippers while sitting, with their hands touching the ground, according to Macrobius (Saturnalia, I:10). Consus seems to be an alias of Saturn in the chthonic aspect, since he is also held to be the husband of Ops. Ops, the Earth Mother, was also considered the Great Mother of the Gods. As such, Ops is an alias of Rhea, Cybele, Demeter, and so on, impersonating the earth as the giver of riches.

The festival of Consus, the Consualia, was celebrated twice a year: first after the harvest, and once again after the sowing of crops was finished. The Consualia was instituted by Romulus, and commemorated the rape (and insemination) of the Sabine women by the Romans. The festival was superintended by the Flamines of Quirinus (Mars), helped by the Vestals. The main priestess at the regia wore a white veil. A chariot race was performed in the Circus Maximus, under the direction of the pontifices. Horses and mules, their heads crowned with chaplets made of flowers, also partook in the celebration. Consus was eventually identified with Neptunus Equester, the alias and counterpart of Poseidon Hippios.

 

 

 

“They were wrong about the sun.
It does not go down into
the underworld at night.
The sun leaves merely
and the underworld emerges.
It can happen at any moment.

It can happen in the morning,
you in the kitchen going through
your mild routines.
Plate, cup, knife.
All at once there’s no blue, no green,
no warning.”
― Margaret Atwood, Morning in the Burned House

 

“Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That's why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and sleep. I am far more likely to achieve peace of mind through writing than the capacity to write through peace.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice‎

 

 

“The cotton was open and spilling into the fields; the very air smelled of it. In field after field as he passed along the pickers, arrested in stooping attitudes, seemed fixed amid the constant surf of bursting bolls like piles in surf, the long, partly-filled sacks streaming away behind them like rigid frozen flags. The air was hot, vivid and breathless--a final fierce concentration of the doomed and dying summer.”
― William Faulkner, The Hamlet

 

 

Meditation:

 

With intangible breath in center of forehead,

as this reaches the heart at the moment of sleep,

have direction over dreams and over death itself.

 

Contemplations:

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