Excerpt of Roberto Calasso: "Ardor" (2010)

Indus civilization till 1600 BCE

Vedic people
    * called themselves "Nobles" (Arya),
    * had no temples, no walls,
    * but chariots with spoked wheels and horses (innovation), whenever they stopped they build fires
     * used bricks only in order to build altars (in most complicated ritual, "Istaka", agnicayana), but they were         destroyed
     * only visible emblem of Vedic time is the sacrificial post (piece of wood sticking out of the ground)
        (called "thunderbolt", yupa), it was a sign, reminding them that they had to sacrifice animals there (who            originally walked upright and became four-legged only bcs they were terrified of sth, a story which is
         unique in antiquity)
     * thought a human should not appear naked in front of a cow bcs cow would be frightened as it would
        think the human would kill it to cloth him/herself
     * their language "samskrta" means "perfect"
     * they liked to call the heaven an "ocean" (samudra, salila)
     * thought that Brahmins' ancestors were the Seven stars of the Great Bear
      * first complete commentary of Vedas is from 14th century AD (by Sayana)
      * sought not power, but rapture
      * knew that every evil sprang from a troubled state of mind. They wanted their enemies or rivals to be               afflicted by "bad dreams" before every other infirmity (which they listed: "lack of offspring,                            homelessness, ruin"
       * thought one should never eat before your guests

39 children of Vrtra/Prajapati (=Ka, Lord of the world/creation) and Vac ("speech" = a column of water):
-    8 Vasus, 11 Rudras, 12 Adityas (gods of light), All-the-gods (visvedevah)
 -    Seven Seers (Saptrarsis) out of breath of Prajapati
 -    horse is one of Prajapatis eyes that had swollen up and then fallen out (horse sacrifice = asvamedha)
 -- seed of Prajapati coupling with daughter the sky (usha) was dangerous until it was given impulse by                Brhaspati/Savitr

cosmic balance if grain heart and first portion (seed of creator) in flesh
creator created with ardor and vision of ritual
already in Brahmanas the enemy is not Death (Mrtyu) but recurring death (punarmrtyu)

    Gods (i.a. Indra) and Anti-Gods (i.a. Soma (the food) and Agni (the devourer)):
    1) Indra king of the gods (Devas)                <=>   Brhaspati brahmin of the gods (Devas)
           Indra made life possible (killed Vrtra who kept waters inside himself with a thunderbolt (vajra)                              
                                         
                                             2) Soma intoxicating plant/juice, object of desire,
                                              abducted Brhaspatis wife Tara and became father of Budha
                                              Soma has to be purchased bcs it was stolen from the heavens - price paid to
                                              silence its keepers, the Gandharvas
                                                => war of gods (Devas) and anti-gods (Asuras)
                                                     transformed into relations between
                                                     sacrifice (male Yajna) and speech (female Vac)
                                         Speech (Vac, female) and Mind (Manas, male) aren't allowed to intercourse

   3) Fire (Agni)

•  three fire types:  circular, square, half moon shaped, 
• fire important to proceed into land bcs of forest, 
• belief fire's (Agni) favorite food was butter (ghee)
• as smoke it is Rudra, when it burns it is Varuna, when it blazes it is Indra, when it dies down its Mitra, when it glows intensely it is brahman

   to know, one must burn (ardor (tapas) is heat within the mind)
   In Brahmanas often sentence "Gods love what is secret and abhor what is obvious"
    --coitus of Indra and Viraj is wakefulness
    --world is made of Soma and Agni, the only gods who are on a continual journey btw earth and sky
    --to accept that what appears disappears into invisible they poured milk in fire every morning (agnihotra-
        ritual = most basic of all rites)

• two birds are inside us Self (atman) and the I (aham); thinking about oneself precedes thought
• nouns are weaker (<) than speech < mind < plan/intention < awareness/reason/becoming aware < meditation
• waters < energy < memory < hope < breath/life 
• truth < thought < faith in effectiveness of rites < sacrifice < joy = fullness = cosmic power             "sacrifice only when you feel joy"
• thought that most of what exists (sat) is hidden (asat)
• power which appears immediately after ardor is desire (kama)
• most important is to be conscious/ aware ("budh-" = "to pay attention", "to awaken" => buddha), desire = fire, when all desire exstinguished then awakening begins, to become brahman one has to awake (in agnyadheya ritual one has to stay awake for one night) 
• Rgveda = poetry, Upanishads = metaphysical texts, Brahmans = gesture, ritual texts, oldest examples of Indo-European prose
• Rta and satya are a couple: "truth" (Rta: order, in "dharma" meaning of "order" is clothed by that of "law")

Sacrifice (Yajna) (officiant at the sacrifice who utters the right formulas (hotr), invocation "Svaha" (sva=own, aha=spoken) (Vedic people thought that to act is to sacrifice), the oldest Indian type of sacred architecture, both enclosed and roofed, is the sadas, the hut where sacrificer or the initiand spends the night before starting the liturgical acts),

• three fencing stakes are added around the fire (symbol of first three Agnis, the first dead gods, recalls that dead gods are absent); 
• yajus = formulas recited during sacrifice, mantras = verse formulas, Gayatri meter only verses in that meter give power
• ritual fee (daksina) is the origin of money and also a form of Vac (speech)
• altar is a woman with perfect proportions and fire is her lover => every sacrificial act is interwoven with a sexual act; during a soma sacrifice the wife of the sacrificer had to do two erotic gestures: exchanging glances with the udgatr (chanter) three times and exposing her right thigh three times, pouring "pannejani" water over it, had to look at the ghee, which symbolises the seed; invocation cry (vasat) "May Agni conduct you to the gods!" is the orgasm; in the hymn of Vrsakapi, the monkey man, Indra is mocked with sexual bawdiness
• libation in every sacrificce and came from India to Rome (acc. to Ovid); whole Brahmana is a play on the word "graha" (grasper, holder, influence, draught, libation); 
• water in sacrifice (pouring in fire) has sexual purpose (water take on human language, bcs water protects embryo) 
• a thousand-year-long rite (sattra), gavamayana (march of the cows) lasts only one year today
• Sun = death (suns first name was "dead egg" = Matranda, last child of Aditi (Limitless) after having given birth to Adityas)
• rest of sacrifice: form of a snake, called Sesa, Residue and also Ananta, Infinite; earth is the residue of the sacrifice, when the Gods left the earth, Siva was Rudra and excluded; samnyasin "renouncer" is the equivalent of a archetypal "individual" in the Western sense, human sacrifice of horse sacrifice, with the difference, that sacrificer didn't had to be a king, it sufficed to be "only" Brahim, fire within, version
• "renunciation" (means following a stage of life (an asrama)) whereas "detachment" (tyaaga) is a mental attitude that can pertain to any stage of life
• "Lead me from non-being into being" is ritual formulation recited during the soma sacrifice
• rna (debt) and rta (word order): debt is born out of order, and given back to order
• "sattra" is the most extreme, esoteric, all-pervading rite in the Vedic liturgy for its conception, its based on the number 12
• food of gods are "vows"
• the dark spots on the moon are places of worship, bcs Devas decided to take various sacrificial altars to the moon
• "appeasing the victim" = strangling the vicitm, before they tell "Make it consent!" instead of "Kill it!"
• it was vital that no other sacrificer was celebrating his sacrificing in a place too close (at least a days journe by horse distance)
• every sacrifice is a journey, at the end bath (avabhrtha)
• celebration of a rite beginns with the crossing of the ocean (thats the origin of the "ghat"s, flight of steps, which marks every beginning)
• in order to mitigate the guilt which those who sacrifice laden on themselves, they put grass on the altar
• sacrifice is an interrupted suicide - there is one ritual where the sacrificer has to die
• only Shiva can crush Desire (Kama), and only Desire (Kama) can wound Shiva
• the Maori noblewoen wore a talisman of jade around their neck ("Tiki"), stylized fetus but also phallus, symbol of macrocosm and microcosm, of God
• in Delphi they thought that possession is the origin of knowledge
• "medha" is sacrifical essence that circulates in the world like water
• the black antelope (Mrga) cannot be sacrificed (Land of aryans = Land where the black antelope roams); antelope is Orion/Prajapati, shot by Sirius/Rudra's arrow, only five domestic animals, including man can be sacrificed; foundation of civilization is the fleeing of the antelope from sacrifice