Roberto Calasso - Ardor

The ritual area has to be clearly marked out, for its boundaries are those of an intermediate world , which we may describe as the world of effective action. It is where we find, on the one hand, a relentless urge for dominion and control and, on the other, an anxious, intense feeling of impermanence. The homologous elements certainly correspond, in the various realms of that which is, but they are also spiteful, slow to obey, elusive. For this reason rituals always begin anew, for this reason they are interlinked, for this reason they tend to eliminate any gap in time where inertia might creep in. And here we touch upon the final obstacle: ritual serves to make life possible, but since ritual tends to occupy time fully (certain rites, such as the mahāsattra , can even last twelve years), life itself becomes impracticable. There is no time free of obligations, free of prescribed rules, in which to live it.

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For the Vedic liturgists, any place, generally speaking, can become a ritual scene. It is enough that water is not too far away and there is sufficient space to mark out the lines between the fires. This is tantamount to admitting that the ritual opus can — indeed must — start each time from nothing. The first thing to do is find a neutral surface with no defects. Any trace that the past may have left has to be swept away. But for the Vedic people, with their marvelous literalism, sweeping away the past means that an officiant sets to work in the clearing, like an obsessive housewife: “When setting up the gārhapatya fire, he first sweeps the chosen space with a palāśa branch. For, when he sets up the gārhapatya fire, he settles himself in that place; and all the builders of fire altars have settled on this earth; and when he sweeps that place, with this action he sweeps away all those who have settled here before him, saying: ‘To avoid settling myself on those who have been here before.’ He says: ‘Away from here! Away! Crawl away from here,’ then: ‘Go away, go and slip away from here,’ he says to those who slither on their bellies. ‘You who are here from ancient and recent times!’ and therefore both those who are here from a remote time as well as those who have settled here today.” The palāśa branch sweeps an area of level, featureless ground. A gesture that, if seen by a passerby, might seem like a domestic ritual moved outdoors for everyone to see, in a place that belongs to no one. Before anything can begin, every previous gesture, every mute connotation with the past, has to be swept away. It’s an important and decisive moment, to the extent of being equated with an action through brahman : “He sweeps with a palāśa branch, for the palāśa tree is brahman : through brahman he sweeps away those who have settled there.”

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The ritual action is an imitation. Of other men, who lived in the beginning? Or of gods? But what actions of the gods, then? The answer appears during the building of the fire altar when certain bricks, known as dviyajus , “which require a double formula,” have to be arranged. At that moment the sacrificer thinks the following words: “I wish to go to the celestial world following the same form, celebrating the same rite that Indra and Agni used to enter the celestial world!” Here it is not a matter of imitating the heroic or erotic exploits performed by the gods of the sky in the sky or in various forays from sky to earth. Here the first action to be imitated— first action meaning rite — is the one through which the gods found a way to the sky. What the sacrificer is imitating is the act of the god himself making himself a god ; something far more secret than any other act that might be attributed to a god once he has become a god. What man seeks above all to imitate is the process by which divinity is gained. And it is highly significant that, to do it effectively, man seeks to imitate the “form” of gestures carried out by the gods. This will one day become the basis of that secular activity which is art. But to imitate the process by which the sky is conquered produces unpredictable results. Imitation might perhaps finally be so effective as to enable men to reach the sky, like so many unwelcome guests. This is why the gods look upon rites performed by men with satisfaction but also suspicion. There is always the risk that men will go too far , as far as the sky, as far as the gods themselves.

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In the Vedic pantheon, there is no Apollo to whom poetry belongs with his own exclusive dominion. Bṛhaspati is the “poet of poets,” though Soma, Vāyu, and even Varuṇa, the dark, remote, formidable Asuras, are also poets. And so too are the gods as a whole. Why? For one reason alone, one which has enormous consequences. Once having reached the sky and immortality, the gods continued to perform sacrifices. We are not told what “invisible fruit” they expected — now that they possessed all conceivable fruits — nor what desire motivated them. But perhaps this has to be accepted: “The mysterious plan of the gods when they meet together — of that we have no knowledge.” The hymns certainly show the gods frequently in the act of sacrifice. But a sacrifice can only be effective when accompanied by the right formulas, which only the kavi , the “poets,” know how to devise. Agni has to follow the worship as an “inspired seer who brings the sacrifice to completion.” And here the texts use the word vípra , describing the poet who quivers from the tension of speech. And so, if the gods hadn’t been poets, their divine life would have been inconceivable, unacceptable.

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Ritual serves above all to resolve through action what thought alone cannot resolve. It is a cautious, timid attempt, made in spite of our own fragility, to answer dilemmas that arise every day, that besiege us, mock us. For example: what do we do with the ash produced by the sacrificial fire? Throw it away? Or use it in some other way? The question was put in this way: “The gods at that time threw away the ash from the hearth pan. They said: ‘If we make this [ash], such as it is, part of us, we will become mortal carcasses, not freed from evil; and, if we throw it away, we will place outside Agni that part of it that belongs to the nature of Agni; discover then in what manner we should act!’ They said: ‘Meditate!’” And what will be the outcome of the meditation? The ash has to be disposed of (otherwise it would mean becoming matter that “is used up”). Yet at the same time, in disposing of the ash, an essential part of Agni must not be lost. So what happens? The ashes are thrown into water. And these words are spoken: “O divine waters, receive these ashes and place them in a soft and fragrant place!” Indeed, they say: “Place them in the most fragrant place of all!” And then: “May the consorts, married to a good lord, bow down to him.” The “consorts” here are the waters, who have found a “good lord” in Agni. The waters are chosen as a place for ashes, because Agni was born from the womb of the waters. Now he returns to it. But with this act the ashes would simply be dispersed, though in their proper place. The doubt would remain that some intrinsic part of Agni’s nature had been lost. And so the officiant, passing his little finger over the waters, collects a few specks of ash to be returned to the fire. So Agni will not be lost. And ritual, thought, and life can go on.

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The ritualists’ anonymous hero — and ideal author of the Brāhmaṇas — is the adhvaryu , the officiant who ceaselessly performs the prescribed actions and murmurs the sacrificial formulas during the rites. Without him nothing would happen, nothing would take form. Like an attendant, he goes from one task to the next. He does not experience the relief, the liberation of chanting. His is just a murmur. He is an artisan of liturgies, working away humbly, resolutely, under the fixed gaze of the brahmin who waits, motionless, to catch every error, every impropriety — and to punish it. Of the adhvaryu we read that “he is the summer, because the summer is, so to speak, fiery: and the adhvaryu leaves the sacrificial ground as something fiery.” Parched and singed from his continual occupation around the fire, the adhvaryu was the first who could say, as did Flaubert (and Ingeborg Bachmann): “Avec ma main brûlée, j’écris sur la nature du feu.” : “With my burnt hand, I write on the nature of fire.”