Crowded Universe

Anti-moderns often speak nostalgically of the “crowded universe” of yesterday, when the world wasn’t just matter in motion but full of fairies and sprites and whatnot. It’s a charming picture, but the reality of a crowded universe wasn’t necessarily a happy thing.

Stephan Maul writes of ancient Mesopotamia: “If a dog constantly howled and yelped in someone’s house, this boded evil for the owner of the house and his family. The person affected, however, had more to fear than impending doom, for the appearance of the hound in his home was – according to the Babylonian view of things – much more than an omen. The sign – in our example a howling dog – had been sent to the person involved by his personal gods because he had displeased them in some way or other and they wished to punish him. What has hitherto gone unrecognised is that it was the animal itself which threatened the person! Like a spore, the evil (lumnu), which according to the omen would later harm the person, already inhabited the dog and the dog then infected the person and his surroundings by means of the sinister energy that emanated from it. The danger of infection was considered to be so great that the evil (lumnu) penetrated into a person even if he had not touched the dog or animal or object, but had only seen it. In a ritual, in which a person attempts to prevent evil announced by snakes, he prays to the gods that they lumna ina zumrisunu likillu,] i.e. that they ‘keep back the evil in the body (of the snakes).’ The evil emanating from a portent – in our example the howling dog – operated on a person until its sinister power culminated in the calamity which had been predicted in the apodosis of the relevant omen interpretation.”

Loneliness doesn’t sound so bad.