Cosmogonies of the Bound

This article suggests that the mythical bindings of the Titans, Hekatoncheires, and other divinities served as powerful models for some private Greek curse tablets; these inscribed lead curses echo much older binding traditions known from hexameter poetry. The presence of dactylic hexameter, epic diction, and deictic language hints that some private curse tablets preserve fossils of early ritual speech—namely, performed binding incantations—and that cosmogonic myth could inform and sculpt private curse practice. The Titans’ binding in Tartarus made them particularly apt figures for supernatural exploitation in binding spells, and this myth undergirds several Greek curse texts. Embedded in theogonic myth, such cosmogonies recalled moments in which the order of the cosmos was shifted and reset, times in which enemies were overthrown and “bound” in punishment. An allusion to the Titans’ “binding” in Tartarus thus became an authoritative paradigm for binding spells meant to analogically “bind” or restrain a flesh-and-bone human enemy. In approaching that elusive common ground shared by myth and ritual, we can observe how the former could shape the latter in everyday thought and practice

Allusion · Art · Curse · Hesiod · Literature · Mythology · Poetry · Theology · Ancient Egypt and Archaeology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · Philosophy

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