The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic & Religion. Study Course 01.08. The Kings of Rome
By: A. W. Finnegan
This chapter, the eighth chapter in the first section of the book, Book 01. Chapter 08: The Kings of Rome, describes the Kingship of the Roman Empire, the culture and society and their customs with my own additional discussion with emphasis on state, religion, and Natural Law. The chapter is a discussion on the Kings of Rome, also the God Jupiter in which served as a model to emulate, with additional insight on the role and symbolism it played in the society. The historical outline and theoretical framework of both magic and religion will be discussed...
Notes & Commentary
**portions in blue are not discussed in book but are my additional commentary
Egeria at Nemi a nymph of water and of the oak, perhaps a form of Diana
The sacred marriage between water and vegetation was celebrated by many peoples. promoted fertility of the earth. Possible annual marriage celebrated between King of the Wood and Diana as the Queen of Wood similar to the Whitsuntide King and Queens of May Day. Egeria worshipped by pregnant women for easy delivery. Egeria thought to also help facilitate the conceptions as well as deliveries. Votive offerings referring to childbirth left at Nemi likely to have been for Egeria rather than Diana, but Egeria was also another form of Diana. Greek counterpart Artemis loved to haunt meres and springs. Identification of Egeria with Diana confirmed by Plutarch. She was called an oak nymph, so associated with oaks as well. Might have been the fairy of a spring that flowed from the roots of a sacred oak. Such a spring said to have gushed from a great oak at Dodona, where priestess drew oracles.
The Roman and Greeks had oaks and groves as the sanctuary, and sanctuary can apply to forests and water as the temple, and in some ways the trees and water go hand in hand with the temple of life, being that it is absolutely necessary to sustain life, without the water, no trees, without the trees, no ecosystem to sustain life. Like a holy tabernacle for the physical existence or body of man. interestingly most houses consist of wood, so they make the sanctuary of modern times, the house.
It was often said that demons or spirits occupied the trees and groves, and when physical bodies are buried they are returned to the earth.
The legend of the nuptials of Numa and Egeria may be reminiscent of a sacred marriage which the kings of Rome contracted with a goddess of water and of vegetation.
Among Greeks, a water from sacred springs or wells was supposed to confer prophetic powers. Explains the so-called 'divine wisdom' that inspired Numa when he returned to write the laws of Rome, comparable to a sacred marriage. Inspired by older times it is thought, that Roman kings regularly contracted with a goddess of vegetation and water to enable his divine powers and magical functions.
If true, the King and Queen may have paraded as God and Goddess during their marriage, as the King and Queen of Egypt had.
Legend of Egeria and Numa points to a sacred grove rather than a house as the scene of the nuptial union, which, like the marriage of the King and Queen of May or the Vine-god and Queen of Athens, may have been annually celebrated as a charm, to ensure not just the fertility of the earth but also of man and beast.
Important admission to keeping man in line? The fertility being that the common person within the empire is harnessed for his/her potential to be used for the greater good but all so often this turns against him as the powers become corrupt and favor security over true freedom, health, and abundance. A perverted, distorted version all so often takes its place.
The scene of marriage between King Numa and Egeria being the sacred grove at Nemi, while same King of the Wood was also wedded to Diana and presided there. Was Numa and Egeria a duplication of the King of the Wood? Not to say the King of Rome ever served as King of the Wood in the Arician grove, but may have been invested with a similar sacred character of the same general kind, and may have held office on similar terms.
Frazer thinks it is possible that these Roman kings reigned not by birth right but perhaps by virtue of their supposed divinity as representatives or embodiments of a god, and that as such mated with a goddess, having to prove their fitness from time to time to keep their divine functions by engaging in a severe bodily struggle, which may have proved fatal, leaving the crown to their adversary.
Knowledge of the Roman kingship far too scanty, but some hints left to indicate it, by the remote predecessors in the dark ages which preceded the dawn of legend.
It was likely used to control and instill fear, being that Nemi was often used for political purposes and politicians said to meet in the grove, they could instill superstitious fears by having the general public or common man think that the laws imposed by man were actually the result of Gods and Goddess of the supernatural stock. Or perhaps it was that if there really is a spirit world that is able to roam the earth, former kings or people drunk on power who died violent ends from an untimely death haunted the psyche of the coming generations and ages because they could not move on and held on the to power and worldly temptations of power and control.
The Roman king seems to have personated Jupiter and worn his costume.
Roman kings personated the God Jupiter. Down to imperial times victorious generals celebrating a triumph, and magistrates presiding at the games in the Circus wore the costumes of Jupiter, borrowed from the great temple on Capitol.
Ancients and moderns copied attire and insignia of the Roman kings. Rode a chariot drawned by four luarel-crowned horses through city while everyone else was on foot. Wore purple robes decorated with gold. In right hand they bore a branch of laurel and in left an ivory sceptre topped with an eagle. Leaf of laurel crowned their brows. Face reddened with vermilion. Eagle was the bird of Jupiter. Oak was his sacred tree. His image had a chariot of four horses and his face was usually painted red during festivals. It was so important to keep divine features properly featured that it became one of the first duties of the magistrates, or the censors.
Greeks sometimes painted red the face or whole body of Dionysus. May have been the update of an older practice of feeding the gods by smearing the face and especially the lips of his idol with the blood of a sacrificial victim.
The Roman god Jupiter was also said to be a divine witness to oaths and the sacred trusts in which strong government and laws of man depend, while interestingly there are parallels to Dionysus the god of wine. As Jupiter was in control of the sky and weather, wine being weathered or fermented grapes, they also both had interesting parellels to strong government and the corrupting of man by being drunk on power, but also drugging the people into a stupor, dumbing down of man to hand his/her inherent nature to the government to care for, therefore freeing themselves of care.
Both Jupiter and Dionysus often had their faces painted red, which could also signify those in positions of power being drunk on power and also bringing the wrath of the divine through Karmic retribution on the people, punishing them for sacrificing their inherent nature to be ruled by those drunk on power. Also since it was said to be an older practice of smearing the blood of sacrificial victims on the face, the commoners being comparable to sacrificial victims, even the politicians who often sacrificed capite velato, meaning with their heads covered, as if in shame. Also, the festivals were probably a time where they could corrupt the politicians and statesmen after heavy festivities caused drunkenness and orgies, whereby they could be blackmailed doing immoral things, which often probably kept them in line in the face of immoral behavior or laws imposed.
The oak crown as an emblem of Jupiter and of the Roman emperors.
As triumph procession always ended in the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, it was particularly important that the head of the victor was graced by crown of oak leaves, and not only was every oak consecrated to Jupiter, but the Capitoline temple of the god was said to have been built by Romulus next to a sacred oak venerated by shepards to which the king attached to him the spoils of war of the enemies in battle.
Oak Crown was sacred to Capitoline Jupiter the god's special emblem.
Ovid, the poet writing in exile at the shores of the Black Sea, the poet sends the book to Rome to be published there, where he imagines it to be passed along the Sacred Way and to the door of the palace on Palatine hill, saying 'Is this, quoth I, the house of Jove? For sure to my prophetic soul the oaken crown was reason good to think it so.'
Since the victors were crowned with oak leaves, by the Goddess of the hunt, but simultaneously by the wrath of Jupiter, the divine powers of natural law that rule over us, punish us with the karma of suffering when we break the Natural Law to appease the immoral ones of man. The King of the Wood speaks of this sacrificial victim with the vitality of man being sacrificed, spilling its blood on the natural landscape and man's inherent nature, which the divine laws punish us like the wrath of Jupiter sending storms and lightning. Interesting that the Q Anon psy-op used the symbolic words 'the Storm is coming' which is more akin to a storm on regular people by government, and the eagle was often associated with Jupiter, and the two were often seen in the same memes, The Storm phrase with the eagle, like a symbol of strong government about to unleash a storm, not on the corruption but on the citizens, and we are beginning to see it unfold now.
The kings of Alba seem also to have claimed to represent Jupiter
Rome founded by settlers from Alba Longa, city on the slope of the Alban hills, overlooking the lake and the Campagna.
Since Jupiter, the God of the Sky, of thunder, and oak, natural to suppose that the kings of Alba from whom the kings of Rome traced his descent, may have setup the same claim before them.
The ones sitting on the throne often fancy themselves as gods, above everyone else, above the laws of their own government, while the regular people are below them, submerged and descended into a pit where they sacrifice themselves and break their moral code to appease what they are told are the divine powers that created the laws of Rome through King Numa's consorting with Egeria.
The Silvii and the Julii
The Alban dynasty bore the name of Silvii, or wood, and significant it is that in the vision of the historic glories of Rome revealed to Aeneas in the underworld, Virgil, an antiquary as well as a poet, should represent all the Silvii as crowned with oak.
a chaplet of oak leaves was at least partially a part of the old kings of Alba Longa, as well as their successors in Rome. In both cases it marked the monarch to be associated with the oak god.
It was to fool man into associating their inhrent natures and Natural Law with that of government and laws imposed by man instead of the underlying order of the Universe.
Julus, the little Jupiter
Silvius, the first king of the Alban Dynsaty, it is said that he got his name because he had been born or brought up in the forest, and when he came to man's estate he contested the kingdom with his kinsman Julus, whose name some of the ancients perceived to mean, little Jupiter.
The people decided in favor of Silvius, but Julus was invested with religious authority and the office of chief pontiff, or rather of Flamen Dialis, the highest dignity after the kingship.
From this Julus, or Little Jupiter, the noble house of the Julii, and hence the first emperors of Rome believed themselves to be sprung.
Silvanus being brought up in the woods may have been a myth, but symbolically stood for the fact that the government are made up of humans who also have the same inherent nature as everyone else, they are not Gods but the Gods rule and raise them, that is to say, they are also raised and bound by Natural Law. Julus, could also be allegorical to represent the Hermetic axiom, "As Above, So Below" meaning that we all have the Divine Spark and ability to Create, and those who are unleashing their wrath on the common man as though they are Jupiter, they too will face the wrath of the Divine with their actions.
The Alban kings seem to have been expected to make thunder and rain for the good of their subjects
While they ceded their pontificate to their rivals, the reigning of the Silvii (Woods) by no means renounced their own claim to personate the god of the oak and thunder. Roman annals record that one of them, Romulus, Remulus, or Silvius by name, set up for being a god in his own person, the equal or superior of Jupiter.
To support this, he constructed machines to mimic the sound of thunder and the flash of lightning.
Diodores relates that in the season of fruitage, the king commanded his soldiers to drown the roar of natural thunder by clashing their swords and shields.
But he paid the price, ironically, he perished struck by a thunderbolt in the midst of a dreadful storm. Swollen by the rain, the Alban lake rose in flood and drowned his palace.
There was a similar story with Salmoneus, King of Elis, the legend points to a custom observed by the early kings of Greece and Italy, who like their fellows in Africa down to modern times in charge to produce the rain and thunder for the good of the crops.
The priestly king Numa passed for an adept in the art of drawing down lightning from the sky. Mock thunder, made by various peoples as a rain charm in modern times. Should not the same have been done in antiquity?
Obviously the personating of Gods could have been both allegorical and literal, that is, they symbolically show that these rulers over others try to act like and pretend to be gods, but they are merely a poor, distortion of them, an attempt to act as though they are the authority over man and the earth, not nature. It is always the attempt to make man associate the inherent nature with that imposed by governments and rulers of religions or kingdoms.
Every Latin town probably had its own local Jupiter
If the kings of Alba and Rome imitated Jupiter as god of the oak by wearing crown of oak leaves, they also may have copied him in his character of a weather god by pretending to make thunder and lightning. May have acted as public rain-makers.
At Rome the sluices of heaven were opened by a sacred stone, and the ceremony formed part of the ritual of Jupiter Elicius, the god who elicits lightning and rain from the skies. So what better thing than to have the king as a living representative of the sky god.
It would have been repeated and reinforced wherever there was an organized government and religion because the entire point was to trick man into taking the lower rulership of man as the higher overarching rulership and authority of Universal Nature.
Many local Jupiters in Latium
Said that the same conclusion about the kings of Rome and Alba may have also held good for the kings of Latium, each represented the local Jupiter. Thought that every Latin town or settlement in Latium had its own Jupiter, as every church in modern Italy has its own Madonna. Like the Baal of the Semites the local Jupiter was commonly worshipped in high places. Wooded heights, where rain-clouds gather, were the natural sanctuary for the god of sky, rain, and oak.
The emulation again holds true here.
Capitoline Jupiter and Juno.
At Rome he occupied the summit of Capitoline hill, while the other summit assigned to his wife Juno. Juno's temple had a long flight of stairs leading up to it, now replaced by the church of St. Mary 'in the altar of the sky' (in Araceli)
The steps of ascent to government rulers were also the descent into the wrath by nature.
Sacred Marriage of Jupiter and Juno.
As oak crown sacred to Jupiter and Juno, it can be supposed that it was on the hills of the Alban mount, from which the Capitoline worship was derived. Thus the oak-god would have his oak-goddess in the sacred grove. So at Dodona the oak-god Zeus was coupled with Dione; whose name is dialectically different than Juno; so on the top of Mount Cithaeron he was periodically wedded to an oaken image of Hera. The annual marriage of Jupiter and Juno may have been celebrated by the Latin stock in the month named after Juno, June.
Juno was also a good representation of the passive, submission by man to rulers of government, it represented that marriage between man's inherent nature to the laws of strong government. Also the symbolism of Juno is significant. She is adorned with a sheep skin, and often the religions asked people to appease their gods by sacrificing goats and bloodletting. The sheep skin or animal skin is symbolic of man wearing the robe of and operating at the level of an animal or farm animal. The etymology of Juno may equate to the "immature" or "young" also "uninitiated through the etymology of her name.
Juno
Roman goddess of adult women and marriage, sister and wife of Jupiter, mid-14c., probably literally "the young one" (if so, perhaps as goddess of the new moon), from Proto-Italic *juwen- "young," which also is the source of Latin iunior "younger," iuvenis "young man" (see young (adj.)). Noted for her stately beauty and fits of jealous rage. Also the patron of national finances. Usually identified with Greek Hera, but Juno also had qualities of Athena.
Note the comparable sound to ewes and to animals of the herd through young.
young (n.)
"young animals collectively, offspring," late 15c., from young (adj.).
iūn- (from or associated with iūnix, "heifer", and iūnior, "younger"
*yeu- "vital force, youthful vigor" compare to ewe
As a passive force, it is interesting to note her stark association with martial powers and military, and war-like appearance, as militaries often breed people who act without question and do immoral things without thinking, as if capite velato (with the head covered), like sheep or goats, unitiated ones.
Janus and Carna
1st of June, Roman biships or pontiffs performed certain rites in the grove of Helernus beside the Tiber, and on same day, perhaps in same place, Carna, nymph of the grove, received offerings of lard and bean-porridge.
Carna said to be a huntress, chaste and coy, who gave the slip to her lovers in the depths of the wood, but was caught by Janus. Some took Carna to be Diana herself. If so, her union with Janus, that is, Dianus, would be appropriate, as she had a chapel on the Caelian hill, which was covered with oak-woods and may have been, like Egeria, an oak-nymph. Janus, or Dianus, and Diana, were mere doubles of Jupiter and Juno under the forms Janus and Diana.
Similar parallels to that seen in Jupiter and Juno marriage
At the sacred marriage of Jupiter and Juno in later times the parts of the deities may have been acted by the Flamen Dialis and the Flaminica
As Romans celebrated marriage of Jupiter and Juno, the Greeks had the counterparts Zeus and Hera. May have been celebrated through images or acted out in ceremony by the Flamen Dialis and his wife th Flaminica. Flamen Dialis was the priest of Jove, a living image of Jupiter, human embodiment of the sky-god.
In earlier times, Roman king, as a living representative of Jupiter would naturally play the part of bridegroom at the sacred marriage, while his queen as the heavenly bride, as Egypt had done with he king and queen masquerading as deities, and at Athens the queen annually wedded the vine-god Dionysus. That the Roman king and queen should act the parts of Jupiter and Juno would seem more natural because the deities themselves bore the name king and queen.
Even though the Flamen Dialis existed under the kings, as it appears to have done, the double representation of Jupiter by the king and Flamen would not have seemed extraordinary at the time.
Having the parts of Gods played by the Flamen Dialis or Flamenica (Priests and Priestesses) would be significant in that they acted as one step between man's inherent nature and the temporal powers of profane government. That is to say, at a subconscious level the priests appease to man more easily than the temporal rulers or statesman, because the priests and priestesses appease to man's need to believe and feed their desire for mysticism, the ponderence of the Universe, or the Great Mystery.
The Flamen and the Flaminica may have been the deputies of the king and the queen.
Same sort of duplication seems to have taken place at Alba, when the Julii were allowed to represent the supreme god in the character of Little Jupiters, while the royal dynasty of the Silvii continued to wield the divine thunder and lightning. Other members long thereafter in the Julian house, the first Emperor of Rome, was deified in his lifetime under the title of Jupiter, while a Flamen was appointed to do for him what the Flamen Dialis did for the heavenly Jove.
Said that King Numa, the typical priestly king, at first discharged himself the functions of Flamen Dialis, but afterwards appointed a separate priest of Jupiter with that title, in order that the kings, untrammeled by the burdensomes religious observances attached to priesthood, might be free to lead their armies to battle.
Title of priestly king too incongruous to be united in the same hands, and that sooner or later the holder of the office seeks rid himself of part of his burden by deputing to others, according to his temper and tastes, either his civil or religious duties.
Frazer thinks probably that the fighting kings of Rome, tired of parading as Jupiter and of observing all the elaborate ritual, all the tedious restrictions which the character of godhead entailed to them, were glad to relegate these duties to someone else, who would be glad to take on the responsibility.
This may explain why the traditions of the later kings, from Tullus Hostilius onwards, exhibit so few traces of sacred or priestly functions adhering to their office. They may have transferred the acting of the God and Goddess to these deputies and thus along with it, the sacred marriage.
It makes perfect sense and there are no contradictions in the explanations I have proposed on the purpose of many rituals being not merely to ensure the abundance of crops but the abundance of control over their people through influence continuously exerted on the subconscious mind, and the priests served this end as the mediators between the divine (man's subconscious) and government (temporal rules created by man through wielding of war, law, and order as though they are Jupiter himself). When this handing over was complete they did not have to rely so much on religion incorporated into government, and now actually they have replaced this religious zeal and authority with a religion of pseudo-science, science that is put forward as science but actually a corrupt variety that is influenced and owned by money and power. Same tricks, new faces and garments.
The Golden Bough Study Course (sequence):
By: A. W. Finnegan
This chapter, the eighth chapter in the first section of the book, Book 01. Chapter 08: The Kings of Rome, describes the Kingship of the Roman Empire, the culture and society and their customs with my own additional discussion with emphasis on state, religion, and Natural Law. The chapter is a discussion on the Kings of Rome, also the God Jupiter in which served as a model to emulate, with additional insight on the role and symbolism it played in the society. The historical outline and theoretical framework of both magic and religion will be discussed...
Notes & Commentary
**portions in blue are not discussed in book but are my additional commentary
Egeria at Nemi a nymph of water and of the oak, perhaps a form of Diana
The sacred marriage between water and vegetation was celebrated by many peoples. promoted fertility of the earth. Possible annual marriage celebrated between King of the Wood and Diana as the Queen of Wood similar to the Whitsuntide King and Queens of May Day. Egeria worshipped by pregnant women for easy delivery. Egeria thought to also help facilitate the conceptions as well as deliveries. Votive offerings referring to childbirth left at Nemi likely to have been for Egeria rather than Diana, but Egeria was also another form of Diana. Greek counterpart Artemis loved to haunt meres and springs. Identification of Egeria with Diana confirmed by Plutarch. She was called an oak nymph, so associated with oaks as well. Might have been the fairy of a spring that flowed from the roots of a sacred oak. Such a spring said to have gushed from a great oak at Dodona, where priestess drew oracles.
The Roman and Greeks had oaks and groves as the sanctuary, and sanctuary can apply to forests and water as the temple, and in some ways the trees and water go hand in hand with the temple of life, being that it is absolutely necessary to sustain life, without the water, no trees, without the trees, no ecosystem to sustain life. Like a holy tabernacle for the physical existence or body of man. interestingly most houses consist of wood, so they make the sanctuary of modern times, the house.
It was often said that demons or spirits occupied the trees and groves, and when physical bodies are buried they are returned to the earth.
The legend of the nuptials of Numa and Egeria may be reminiscent of a sacred marriage which the kings of Rome contracted with a goddess of water and of vegetation.
Among Greeks, a water from sacred springs or wells was supposed to confer prophetic powers. Explains the so-called 'divine wisdom' that inspired Numa when he returned to write the laws of Rome, comparable to a sacred marriage. Inspired by older times it is thought, that Roman kings regularly contracted with a goddess of vegetation and water to enable his divine powers and magical functions.
If true, the King and Queen may have paraded as God and Goddess during their marriage, as the King and Queen of Egypt had.
Legend of Egeria and Numa points to a sacred grove rather than a house as the scene of the nuptial union, which, like the marriage of the King and Queen of May or the Vine-god and Queen of Athens, may have been annually celebrated as a charm, to ensure not just the fertility of the earth but also of man and beast.
Important admission to keeping man in line? The fertility being that the common person within the empire is harnessed for his/her potential to be used for the greater good but all so often this turns against him as the powers become corrupt and favor security over true freedom, health, and abundance. A perverted, distorted version all so often takes its place.
The scene of marriage between King Numa and Egeria being the sacred grove at Nemi, while same King of the Wood was also wedded to Diana and presided there. Was Numa and Egeria a duplication of the King of the Wood? Not to say the King of Rome ever served as King of the Wood in the Arician grove, but may have been invested with a similar sacred character of the same general kind, and may have held office on similar terms.
Frazer thinks it is possible that these Roman kings reigned not by birth right but perhaps by virtue of their supposed divinity as representatives or embodiments of a god, and that as such mated with a goddess, having to prove their fitness from time to time to keep their divine functions by engaging in a severe bodily struggle, which may have proved fatal, leaving the crown to their adversary.
Knowledge of the Roman kingship far too scanty, but some hints left to indicate it, by the remote predecessors in the dark ages which preceded the dawn of legend.
It was likely used to control and instill fear, being that Nemi was often used for political purposes and politicians said to meet in the grove, they could instill superstitious fears by having the general public or common man think that the laws imposed by man were actually the result of Gods and Goddess of the supernatural stock. Or perhaps it was that if there really is a spirit world that is able to roam the earth, former kings or people drunk on power who died violent ends from an untimely death haunted the psyche of the coming generations and ages because they could not move on and held on the to power and worldly temptations of power and control.
The Roman king seems to have personated Jupiter and worn his costume.
Roman kings personated the God Jupiter. Down to imperial times victorious generals celebrating a triumph, and magistrates presiding at the games in the Circus wore the costumes of Jupiter, borrowed from the great temple on Capitol.
Ancients and moderns copied attire and insignia of the Roman kings. Rode a chariot drawned by four luarel-crowned horses through city while everyone else was on foot. Wore purple robes decorated with gold. In right hand they bore a branch of laurel and in left an ivory sceptre topped with an eagle. Leaf of laurel crowned their brows. Face reddened with vermilion. Eagle was the bird of Jupiter. Oak was his sacred tree. His image had a chariot of four horses and his face was usually painted red during festivals. It was so important to keep divine features properly featured that it became one of the first duties of the magistrates, or the censors.
Greeks sometimes painted red the face or whole body of Dionysus. May have been the update of an older practice of feeding the gods by smearing the face and especially the lips of his idol with the blood of a sacrificial victim.
The Roman god Jupiter was also said to be a divine witness to oaths and the sacred trusts in which strong government and laws of man depend, while interestingly there are parallels to Dionysus the god of wine. As Jupiter was in control of the sky and weather, wine being weathered or fermented grapes, they also both had interesting parellels to strong government and the corrupting of man by being drunk on power, but also drugging the people into a stupor, dumbing down of man to hand his/her inherent nature to the government to care for, therefore freeing themselves of care.
Both Jupiter and Dionysus often had their faces painted red, which could also signify those in positions of power being drunk on power and also bringing the wrath of the divine through Karmic retribution on the people, punishing them for sacrificing their inherent nature to be ruled by those drunk on power. Also since it was said to be an older practice of smearing the blood of sacrificial victims on the face, the commoners being comparable to sacrificial victims, even the politicians who often sacrificed capite velato, meaning with their heads covered, as if in shame. Also, the festivals were probably a time where they could corrupt the politicians and statesmen after heavy festivities caused drunkenness and orgies, whereby they could be blackmailed doing immoral things, which often probably kept them in line in the face of immoral behavior or laws imposed.
The oak crown as an emblem of Jupiter and of the Roman emperors.
As triumph procession always ended in the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, it was particularly important that the head of the victor was graced by crown of oak leaves, and not only was every oak consecrated to Jupiter, but the Capitoline temple of the god was said to have been built by Romulus next to a sacred oak venerated by shepards to which the king attached to him the spoils of war of the enemies in battle.
Oak Crown was sacred to Capitoline Jupiter the god's special emblem.
Ovid, the poet writing in exile at the shores of the Black Sea, the poet sends the book to Rome to be published there, where he imagines it to be passed along the Sacred Way and to the door of the palace on Palatine hill, saying 'Is this, quoth I, the house of Jove? For sure to my prophetic soul the oaken crown was reason good to think it so.'
Since the victors were crowned with oak leaves, by the Goddess of the hunt, but simultaneously by the wrath of Jupiter, the divine powers of natural law that rule over us, punish us with the karma of suffering when we break the Natural Law to appease the immoral ones of man. The King of the Wood speaks of this sacrificial victim with the vitality of man being sacrificed, spilling its blood on the natural landscape and man's inherent nature, which the divine laws punish us like the wrath of Jupiter sending storms and lightning. Interesting that the Q Anon psy-op used the symbolic words 'the Storm is coming' which is more akin to a storm on regular people by government, and the eagle was often associated with Jupiter, and the two were often seen in the same memes, The Storm phrase with the eagle, like a symbol of strong government about to unleash a storm, not on the corruption but on the citizens, and we are beginning to see it unfold now.
The kings of Alba seem also to have claimed to represent Jupiter
Rome founded by settlers from Alba Longa, city on the slope of the Alban hills, overlooking the lake and the Campagna.
Since Jupiter, the God of the Sky, of thunder, and oak, natural to suppose that the kings of Alba from whom the kings of Rome traced his descent, may have setup the same claim before them.
The ones sitting on the throne often fancy themselves as gods, above everyone else, above the laws of their own government, while the regular people are below them, submerged and descended into a pit where they sacrifice themselves and break their moral code to appease what they are told are the divine powers that created the laws of Rome through King Numa's consorting with Egeria.
The Silvii and the Julii
The Alban dynasty bore the name of Silvii, or wood, and significant it is that in the vision of the historic glories of Rome revealed to Aeneas in the underworld, Virgil, an antiquary as well as a poet, should represent all the Silvii as crowned with oak.
a chaplet of oak leaves was at least partially a part of the old kings of Alba Longa, as well as their successors in Rome. In both cases it marked the monarch to be associated with the oak god.
It was to fool man into associating their inhrent natures and Natural Law with that of government and laws imposed by man instead of the underlying order of the Universe.
Julus, the little Jupiter
Silvius, the first king of the Alban Dynsaty, it is said that he got his name because he had been born or brought up in the forest, and when he came to man's estate he contested the kingdom with his kinsman Julus, whose name some of the ancients perceived to mean, little Jupiter.
The people decided in favor of Silvius, but Julus was invested with religious authority and the office of chief pontiff, or rather of Flamen Dialis, the highest dignity after the kingship.
From this Julus, or Little Jupiter, the noble house of the Julii, and hence the first emperors of Rome believed themselves to be sprung.
Silvanus being brought up in the woods may have been a myth, but symbolically stood for the fact that the government are made up of humans who also have the same inherent nature as everyone else, they are not Gods but the Gods rule and raise them, that is to say, they are also raised and bound by Natural Law. Julus, could also be allegorical to represent the Hermetic axiom, "As Above, So Below" meaning that we all have the Divine Spark and ability to Create, and those who are unleashing their wrath on the common man as though they are Jupiter, they too will face the wrath of the Divine with their actions.
The Alban kings seem to have been expected to make thunder and rain for the good of their subjects
While they ceded their pontificate to their rivals, the reigning of the Silvii (Woods) by no means renounced their own claim to personate the god of the oak and thunder. Roman annals record that one of them, Romulus, Remulus, or Silvius by name, set up for being a god in his own person, the equal or superior of Jupiter.
To support this, he constructed machines to mimic the sound of thunder and the flash of lightning.
Diodores relates that in the season of fruitage, the king commanded his soldiers to drown the roar of natural thunder by clashing their swords and shields.
But he paid the price, ironically, he perished struck by a thunderbolt in the midst of a dreadful storm. Swollen by the rain, the Alban lake rose in flood and drowned his palace.
There was a similar story with Salmoneus, King of Elis, the legend points to a custom observed by the early kings of Greece and Italy, who like their fellows in Africa down to modern times in charge to produce the rain and thunder for the good of the crops.
The priestly king Numa passed for an adept in the art of drawing down lightning from the sky. Mock thunder, made by various peoples as a rain charm in modern times. Should not the same have been done in antiquity?
Obviously the personating of Gods could have been both allegorical and literal, that is, they symbolically show that these rulers over others try to act like and pretend to be gods, but they are merely a poor, distortion of them, an attempt to act as though they are the authority over man and the earth, not nature. It is always the attempt to make man associate the inherent nature with that imposed by governments and rulers of religions or kingdoms.
Every Latin town probably had its own local Jupiter
If the kings of Alba and Rome imitated Jupiter as god of the oak by wearing crown of oak leaves, they also may have copied him in his character of a weather god by pretending to make thunder and lightning. May have acted as public rain-makers.
At Rome the sluices of heaven were opened by a sacred stone, and the ceremony formed part of the ritual of Jupiter Elicius, the god who elicits lightning and rain from the skies. So what better thing than to have the king as a living representative of the sky god.
It would have been repeated and reinforced wherever there was an organized government and religion because the entire point was to trick man into taking the lower rulership of man as the higher overarching rulership and authority of Universal Nature.
Many local Jupiters in Latium
Said that the same conclusion about the kings of Rome and Alba may have also held good for the kings of Latium, each represented the local Jupiter. Thought that every Latin town or settlement in Latium had its own Jupiter, as every church in modern Italy has its own Madonna. Like the Baal of the Semites the local Jupiter was commonly worshipped in high places. Wooded heights, where rain-clouds gather, were the natural sanctuary for the god of sky, rain, and oak.
The emulation again holds true here.
Capitoline Jupiter and Juno.
At Rome he occupied the summit of Capitoline hill, while the other summit assigned to his wife Juno. Juno's temple had a long flight of stairs leading up to it, now replaced by the church of St. Mary 'in the altar of the sky' (in Araceli)
The steps of ascent to government rulers were also the descent into the wrath by nature.
Sacred Marriage of Jupiter and Juno.
As oak crown sacred to Jupiter and Juno, it can be supposed that it was on the hills of the Alban mount, from which the Capitoline worship was derived. Thus the oak-god would have his oak-goddess in the sacred grove. So at Dodona the oak-god Zeus was coupled with Dione; whose name is dialectically different than Juno; so on the top of Mount Cithaeron he was periodically wedded to an oaken image of Hera. The annual marriage of Jupiter and Juno may have been celebrated by the Latin stock in the month named after Juno, June.
Juno was also a good representation of the passive, submission by man to rulers of government, it represented that marriage between man's inherent nature to the laws of strong government. Also the symbolism of Juno is significant. She is adorned with a sheep skin, and often the religions asked people to appease their gods by sacrificing goats and bloodletting. The sheep skin or animal skin is symbolic of man wearing the robe of and operating at the level of an animal or farm animal. The etymology of Juno may equate to the "immature" or "young" also "uninitiated through the etymology of her name.
Juno
Roman goddess of adult women and marriage, sister and wife of Jupiter, mid-14c., probably literally "the young one" (if so, perhaps as goddess of the new moon), from Proto-Italic *juwen- "young," which also is the source of Latin iunior "younger," iuvenis "young man" (see young (adj.)). Noted for her stately beauty and fits of jealous rage. Also the patron of national finances. Usually identified with Greek Hera, but Juno also had qualities of Athena.
Note the comparable sound to ewes and to animals of the herd through young.
young (n.)
"young animals collectively, offspring," late 15c., from young (adj.).
iūn- (from or associated with iūnix, "heifer", and iūnior, "younger"
*yeu- "vital force, youthful vigor" compare to ewe
As a passive force, it is interesting to note her stark association with martial powers and military, and war-like appearance, as militaries often breed people who act without question and do immoral things without thinking, as if capite velato (with the head covered), like sheep or goats, unitiated ones.
Janus and Carna
1st of June, Roman biships or pontiffs performed certain rites in the grove of Helernus beside the Tiber, and on same day, perhaps in same place, Carna, nymph of the grove, received offerings of lard and bean-porridge.
Carna said to be a huntress, chaste and coy, who gave the slip to her lovers in the depths of the wood, but was caught by Janus. Some took Carna to be Diana herself. If so, her union with Janus, that is, Dianus, would be appropriate, as she had a chapel on the Caelian hill, which was covered with oak-woods and may have been, like Egeria, an oak-nymph. Janus, or Dianus, and Diana, were mere doubles of Jupiter and Juno under the forms Janus and Diana.
Similar parallels to that seen in Jupiter and Juno marriage
At the sacred marriage of Jupiter and Juno in later times the parts of the deities may have been acted by the Flamen Dialis and the Flaminica
As Romans celebrated marriage of Jupiter and Juno, the Greeks had the counterparts Zeus and Hera. May have been celebrated through images or acted out in ceremony by the Flamen Dialis and his wife th Flaminica. Flamen Dialis was the priest of Jove, a living image of Jupiter, human embodiment of the sky-god.
In earlier times, Roman king, as a living representative of Jupiter would naturally play the part of bridegroom at the sacred marriage, while his queen as the heavenly bride, as Egypt had done with he king and queen masquerading as deities, and at Athens the queen annually wedded the vine-god Dionysus. That the Roman king and queen should act the parts of Jupiter and Juno would seem more natural because the deities themselves bore the name king and queen.
Even though the Flamen Dialis existed under the kings, as it appears to have done, the double representation of Jupiter by the king and Flamen would not have seemed extraordinary at the time.
Having the parts of Gods played by the Flamen Dialis or Flamenica (Priests and Priestesses) would be significant in that they acted as one step between man's inherent nature and the temporal powers of profane government. That is to say, at a subconscious level the priests appease to man more easily than the temporal rulers or statesman, because the priests and priestesses appease to man's need to believe and feed their desire for mysticism, the ponderence of the Universe, or the Great Mystery.
The Flamen and the Flaminica may have been the deputies of the king and the queen.
Same sort of duplication seems to have taken place at Alba, when the Julii were allowed to represent the supreme god in the character of Little Jupiters, while the royal dynasty of the Silvii continued to wield the divine thunder and lightning. Other members long thereafter in the Julian house, the first Emperor of Rome, was deified in his lifetime under the title of Jupiter, while a Flamen was appointed to do for him what the Flamen Dialis did for the heavenly Jove.
Said that King Numa, the typical priestly king, at first discharged himself the functions of Flamen Dialis, but afterwards appointed a separate priest of Jupiter with that title, in order that the kings, untrammeled by the burdensomes religious observances attached to priesthood, might be free to lead their armies to battle.
Title of priestly king too incongruous to be united in the same hands, and that sooner or later the holder of the office seeks rid himself of part of his burden by deputing to others, according to his temper and tastes, either his civil or religious duties.
Frazer thinks probably that the fighting kings of Rome, tired of parading as Jupiter and of observing all the elaborate ritual, all the tedious restrictions which the character of godhead entailed to them, were glad to relegate these duties to someone else, who would be glad to take on the responsibility.
This may explain why the traditions of the later kings, from Tullus Hostilius onwards, exhibit so few traces of sacred or priestly functions adhering to their office. They may have transferred the acting of the God and Goddess to these deputies and thus along with it, the sacred marriage.
It makes perfect sense and there are no contradictions in the explanations I have proposed on the purpose of many rituals being not merely to ensure the abundance of crops but the abundance of control over their people through influence continuously exerted on the subconscious mind, and the priests served this end as the mediators between the divine (man's subconscious) and government (temporal rules created by man through wielding of war, law, and order as though they are Jupiter himself). When this handing over was complete they did not have to rely so much on religion incorporated into government, and now actually they have replaced this religious zeal and authority with a religion of pseudo-science, science that is put forward as science but actually a corrupt variety that is influenced and owned by money and power. Same tricks, new faces and garments.
The Golden Bough Study Course (sequence):
EPISODE 00 - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion. Study Course 00. Introductory Remarks & Overview
EPISODE 01 - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion. Study Course 01.01 - Book 01. Chapter 01: The King of the Wood
EPISODE 02 - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion. Study Course 01.02 - Book 01. Chapter 02: Priestly Kings
EPISODE 03 - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion. Study Course 01.03 - Book 01. Chapter 03: Magic and Religion
EPISODE 01 - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion. Study Course 01.01 - Book 01. Chapter 01: The King of the Wood
EPISODE 02 - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion. Study Course 01.02 - Book 01. Chapter 02: Priestly Kings
EPISODE 03 - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion. Study Course 01.03 - Book 01. Chapter 03: Magic and Religion
EPISODE 04 - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion. Study Course 01.04 - Book 01. Chapter 04: Human Gods
EPISODE 05 - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion. Study Course 01.05 - Book 01. Chapter 05: Departmental Kings of Nature
EPISODE 06 - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion. Study Course 01.06 - Book 01. Chapter 06: The Worship of Trees
EPISODE 07 - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion. Study Course 01.07 - Book 01. Chapter 07: The Sacred Marriage
EPISODE 08 - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion. Study Course 01.08 - Book 01. Chapter 08: The Kings of Rome [You are here]
EPISODE 05 - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion. Study Course 01.05 - Book 01. Chapter 05: Departmental Kings of Nature
EPISODE 06 - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion. Study Course 01.06 - Book 01. Chapter 06: The Worship of Trees
EPISODE 07 - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion. Study Course 01.07 - Book 01. Chapter 07: The Sacred Marriage
EPISODE 08 - The Golden Bough - A Study in Magic and Religion. Study Course 01.08 - Book 01. Chapter 08: The Kings of Rome [You are here]