The Anathemata
Sherthursdaye and Venus day (continued)
Our chrism’d Triptolemusa
to quicken, to judge:
the furrows
the dead
from dear and grave Demeter come
germ of all:
of the dear arts as well as bread.
To institute, to make stable
to offer oblations
permanent
kindly, acceptable and valid:
tillage fruit
man’s-norm
then rational
so food of angels.1
Munerab
of Liber, poured
of Ceres, broken.
Not desert-rites, nor nomad-liberi.2
Levites! the new rite holds
is here
before your older rites begin.3
David Jones notes
1 Cf. ‘Ecce panis angelorum’ and ‘man is ... Reasonable as an Aungell’. Triptolemus was sent by the Mother Goddess to initiate agriculture and settled civilization and was also at Eleusis judge of the dead. He necessarily recalls Melchesidec who appears as a priest of agriculture-rites in a pastoral setting at the termination of a tribal war. If the significance of such types was brought out by the author of Hebrews VII, the Roman liturgists from very early on had given that significance special point and emphasis by relating it very immediately to the manual act of sacrifice, so that it continues still to be reasserted, every day, wherever a priest of the Roman rite asks that his offering of the transubstantiated fruits of the earth shall be identified with and as acceptable as ‘that which thy high priest Melchesidec offered up to thee’. (See the Roman Mass prayer Supra quae propido, following close on the act of consecration.)
2 In the sense of the young of animals.
3 Cf. Heb. VII, 5-11 and the Maundy Thursday hymn, Pange lingua, verse 5. ‘Et antiquum documentum Novo cedat ritui’ ‘And let an antique formula give place to a new rite.’
additional notes
DJ note 1: Ecce panis angelorum (‘behold the bread of angels’) is from a hymn to the Eucharist written by Thomas Aquinas. The idea that man is reasonable, ‘as an angel’, is a theological truth that dates back many centuries an can be traced to the second century philosopher Ptolemy. The text of the Mass prayer quoted can be found here.
DJ note 3: From Hebrews Chapter 7:
[5] And verily they that are of the sons of Levi, who receive the office of the priesthood, have a commandment to take tithes of the people according to the law, that is, of their brethren, though they come out of the loins of Abraham:
[6] But he whose descent is not counted from them received tithes of Abraham, and blessed him that had the promises.
[7] And without all contradiction the less is blessed of the better.
[8] And here men that die receive tithes; but there he receiveth them, of whom it is witnessed that he liveth.
[9] And as I may so say, Levi also, who receiveth tithes, payed tithes in Abraham.
[10] For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchesidec met him.
[11] If therefore perfection were by the Levitical priesthood, (for under it the people received the law,) what further need was there that another priest should rise after the order of Melchesidec, and not be called after the order of Aaron?
The idea is that the poet is speaking of the new Christian rite, not the rite of the old covenant which prevailed in the days of the Hebrew partiarchs and Levitical priests when the children of Israel were wandering desert nomads..
a Tirptolemus was a demi-god who presided over the sowing of grain-seed and the milling of wheat. His name means ‘He who Pounds the Husks.’
In myth, Triptolemos was one of the Eleusinian princes who kindly received Demeter when she came mourning the loss of her daughter Persephone. The young goddess was eventually returned to her from the Underworld, and Demeter in her munificence, instructed Triptolemos in the art of agriculture, and gave him a winged chariot drawn by serpents so that he might travel the world spreading her gift.
chrism’d means anointed with holy oil or chrism.
see also
‘acceptable and valid’ refers right back to the opening of the poem.
semantic structures
Note the chiasmus: quicken the furrows, judge the dead.
glossary
b munera: gifts (Latin). Ceres, the goddess of cereal crops; Liber (Bacchus) the god of wine (Greek).
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