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Aion (deity)
Aion ( el, Αἰών) is a Hellenistic deity associated with time, the orb or circle encompassing the universe, and the zodiac. The "time" which Aion represents is perpetual, unbounded, ritual, and cyclic: The future is a returning version of the past, later called '' aevum'' (''see'' Vedic Sanskrit ''Ṛtú''). This kind of time contrasts with empirical, linear, progressive, and historical time that Chronos represented, which divides into past, present, and future. Aion is thus a god of the cyclic ages, and the cycle of the year and the zodiac. In the latter part of the Classical era he became associated with mystery religions concerned with the afterlife, such as the mysteries of Cybele, the Dionysian mysteries, Orphic religion, and the Mithraic mysteries. In Latin, the concept of the deity may appear as Aeternitas, Anna Perenna, or '' Saeculum''. He is typically in the company of an earth or mother goddess such as Tellus or Cybele, as on the Parabiago plate. Iconograp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aevum
In scholastic philosophy, the aevum (also called aeviternity) is the temporal mode of existence experienced by angels and by the saints in heaven. In some ways, it is a state that logically lies between the eternity (timelessness) of God and the temporal experience of material beings. It is sometimes referred to as "improper eternity". Etymology The word ''aevum'' is Latin, originally signifying "age", "aeon", or "everlasting time"; the word ''aeviternity'' comes from the Medieval Latin neologism ''aeviternitas''. History The concept of the aevum dates back at least to Albertus Magnus's treatise ''De quattuor coaequaevis''. Its most familiar description is found in the ''Summa theologica'' of Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas identifies the aevum as the measure of the existence of beings that "recede less from permanence of being, forasmuch as their being neither consists in change, nor is the subject of change; nevertheless they have change annexed to them either actually, or pote ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saeculum
A is a length of time roughly equal to the potential lifetime of a person or, equivalently, the complete renewal of a human population. Originally it meant the time from the moment that something happened (for example the founding of a city) until the point in time that all people who had lived at the first moment had died. At that point a new would start. According to legend, the gods had allotted a certain number of to every people or civilization; the Etruscans, for example, had been given ten saecula. By the 2nd century BC, Roman historians were using the to periodize their chronicles and track wars. At the time of the reign of emperor Augustus, the Classical Rome, Romans decided that a was 110 years. In 17 BC, Caesar Augustus organized ''Secular Games, Ludi saeculares'' ("saecular games") for the first time to celebrate the "fifth saeculum of Rome". Augustus aimed to link the with imperial authority. Emperors such Claudius and Septimius Severus celebrated the passing o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars (including its own descendants, the Romance languages) supplanted it in common academic and political usage, and it eventually became a dead language in the modern linguistic definition. Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), six or seven noun cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, and vocative), five declensions, four verb conjug ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mithraic Mysteries
Mithraism, also known as the Mithraic mysteries or the Cult of Mithras, was a Roman mystery religion centered on the god Mithras. Although inspired by Iranian worship of the Zoroastrian divinity (''yazata'') Mithra, the Roman Mithras is linked to a new and distinctive imagery, with the level of continuity between Persian and Greco-Roman practice debated. The mysteries were popular among the Imperial Roman army from about the 1st to the 4th-century CE. Worshippers of Mithras had a complex system of seven grades of initiation and communal ritual meals. Initiates called themselves ''syndexioi'', those "united by the handshake". They met in underground temples, now called ''mithraea'' (singular '' mithraeum''), which survive in large numbers. The cult appears to have had its center in Rome, and was popular throughout the western half of the empire, as far south as Roman Africa and Numidia, as far as Roman Dacia, as far north as Roman Britain, and to a lesser extent in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orphism (religion)
Orphism (more rarely Orphicism; grc, Ὀρφικά, Orphiká) is the name given to a set of religious beliefs and practices originating in the ancient Greek and Hellenistic world, associated with literature ascribed to the mythical poet Orpheus, who descended into the Greek underworld and returned. This type of journey is called a katabasis and is the basis of a several hero worships and journeys. Orphics revered Dionysus (who once descended into the Underworld and returned) and Persephone (who annually descended into the Underworld for a season and then returned). Orphism has been described as a reform of the earlier Dionysian religion, involving a re-interpretation or re-reading of the myth of Dionysus and a re-ordering of Hesiod's ''Theogony'', based in part on pre-Socratic philosophy. The central focus of Orphism is the suffering and death of the god Dionysus at the hands of the Titans, which forms the basis of Orphism's central myth. According to this myth, the infant Di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cybele
Cybele ( ; Phrygian language, Phrygian: ''Matar Kubileya/Kubeleya'' "Kubileya/Kubeleya Mother", perhaps "Mountain Mother"; Lydian language, Lydian ''Kuvava''; el, Κυβέλη ''Kybele'', ''Kybebe'', ''Kybelis'') is an Anatolian mother goddess; she may have a possible forerunner in the earliest neolithic at Çatalhöyük, where statues of plump women, sometimes sitting, accompanied by lionesses, have been found in excavations. Phrygia's only known goddess, she was probably its national deity. Greek colonists in Asia Minor adopted and adapted her Phrygian cult and spread it to mainland Greece and to the more distant Magna Graeca, western Greek colonies around the 6th century BC. In Ancient Greece , Greece, Cybele met with a mixed reception. She became partially assimilated to aspects of the Earth-goddess Gaia (mythology) , Gaia, of her possibly Minoan civilization , Minoan equivalent Rhea (mythology) , Rhea, and of the harvest–mother goddess Demeter. Some city-states, nota ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Afterlife
The afterlife (also referred to as life after death) is a purported existence in which the essential part of an individual's identity or their stream of consciousness continues to live after the death of their physical body. The surviving essential aspect varies between belief systems; it may be some partial element, or the entire soul or spirit of an individual, which carries with it and may confer personal identity or, on the contrary, nirvana. Belief in an afterlife is in contrast to the belief in oblivion after death. In some views, this continued existence takes place in a spiritual realm, while in others, the individual may be reborn into this world and begin the life cycle over again, likely with no memory of what they have done in the past. In this latter view, such rebirths and deaths may take place over and over again continuously until the individual gains entry to a spiritual realm or otherworld. Major views on the afterlife derive from religion, esotericism ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mystery Religions
Mystery religions, mystery cults, sacred mysteries or simply mysteries, were religious schools of the Greco-Roman world for which participation was reserved to initiates ''(mystai)''. The main characterization of this religion is the secrecy associated with the particulars of the initiation and the ritual practice, which may not be revealed to outsiders. The most famous mysteries of Greco-Roman antiquity were the Eleusinian Mysteries, which predated the Greek Dark Ages. The mystery schools flourished in Late Antiquity; Julian the Apostate in the mid 4th century is known to have been initiated into three distinct mystery schools—most notably the mithraists. Due to the secret nature of the school, and because the mystery religions of Late Antiquity were persecuted by the Christian Roman Empire from the 4th century, the details of these religious practices are derived from descriptions, imagery and cross-cultural studies. Much information on the Mysteries come from Marcus Te ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classical Antiquity
Classical antiquity (also the classical era, classical period or classical age) is the period of cultural history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD centred on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome known as the Greco-Roman world. It is the period in which both Greek and Roman societies flourished and wielded huge influence throughout much of Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia. Conventionally, it is taken to begin with the earliest-recorded Epic Greek poetry of Homer (8th–7th-century BC), and continues through the emergence of Christianity (1st century AD) and the fall of the Western Roman Empire (5th-century AD). It ends with the decline of classical culture during late antiquity (250–750), a period overlapping with the Early Middle Ages (600–1000). Such a wide span of history and territory covers many disparate cultures and periods. ''Classical antiquity'' may also refer to an idealized vi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Annual Cycle
An annual cycle refers to a set of changes or events that uniformly, or consistently, take place at the same time of year. In biology, the annual cycle for plants and animals details behavioral and chemical changes that take place as the seasons advance. In business, a business cycle refers to the way modelling and analysis is applied to the periodic development and marketing of new products and services. In religion, the annual cycle refers to the various celebrations or memorials that occur in the same sequence from year to year. For example, in Christianity the liturgical year is an annual cycle, which for some Christian denominations is composed of the ''temporal cycle'' that tracks the events in the life of Christ, and the ''sanctoral cycle'' which tracks the various saint's days. Some Christian churches only observe the ''temporal cycle''.Flesher, Pau"Christian Time and Worship" ''Exploring Religions'' University of Wyoming In climatology, an annual cycle is the part o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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