New Year is an excellent occasion to look both behind and ahead, an opportunity to ground ourselves in where we are right now. It's a sort of doorway, so to speak, between the past and the present. So what better time than today to do a throwback post? I'm also a bit hungover, so maybe this can be considered a sort of day off? π€
I originally wrote the following on December 28, 2022! Crazy. It seems like it was only yesterday that I was reading up on New Year traditions.
I don't reread my old stuff as often as I should. This post is a bit more "formal" than what I favor nowadays, but it's fun how I can still see myself in it. Somewhere under that formality is my "me".
At the time I was writing this, I used to think of myself as a semi-academic wannabe, and you can see it in how this is written. I actually remember that before writing this post, I was feeling fed up with all the stuffy formality of (again wannabe) philosophical discourse, so I allowed myself to write this as play, just for fun. And it shows!
It's almost New Year's Eve, and to celebrate, we'll be talking about the Roman god Janus and the origins of this festivity.
Let me tell you a story about transitions...
Romans were very fond of their festivities, and among their most important ones was New Year. Romans believed that the way something began was an omen for how good that something would be. For this reason, the first day of the year was festive, with people exchanging gifts and pleasantries all around, much like we do today. This was also a festival of transitions, when the past year flows into the future one, the old becomes the new, and black becomes white.
Like most cultures, they had a figure to whom they attributed all these mystical properties they perceived as occurring during this day. This anthropomorphic personification they called Janus. Here's the blurb from his Wikipedia page.
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Janus is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames, and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces. The month of January is named for Janus (Ianuarius).
(Image of Janus statue. Taken from the Wikipedia article linked above.)
Janus presides over "all beginnings and transitions, whether abstract or concrete, sacred or profane". Something that's not obvious is that his role as master of change and transitions also gives him mastery of time itself (which is an integral component in any transformation process). It is said that with one face he looks to the future, and with the other towards the past.
Another interesting aspect is his name.
The name of the god IΔnus, meaning in Latin 'arched passage, doorway'.
In his most basic form, I guess we can say that he facilitates passage from one reality into another.
Now that we've got the introduction out of the way, we can start asking some questions.
The first is this concept of transforming from A to B, or, as said above, from one reality into another. Whatever is changing does not stop being during its transition; instead, it flows from one state to the other. The concept of beginning or ending is from a human point of view, but cosmically things only ever just flow, from top to bottom, from cold to hot, and there is really no thing to start with. I guess the same could be applied to the Ship of Theseus thought experiment. (Side note, this reminds me of Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy; you should check it out if you find this idea intriguing).
I also find the gateway imagery really interesting. Especially, what happens when you find yourself in the dead centre of a doorway that connects two rooms? Do both rooms become one?
(Doorway photo, taken from here)
If we agree that that is the case, then we might say that Janus also represents the concept of duality. By allowing something to become something else, he enables the universe to have opposites. Black can also be white, or any shade of grey in between. Maybe the distinction here is just apparent when seen from the human point of view, but cosmically it's again all flow.
Anyway, interesting food for thought.
If you use the Gregorian calendar, then I wish you a happy New Year. If not, then I wish you a happy day :)
PS: If you want to read more about this topic, I recommend you check out this page.
To end, here are some pictures from today's trip to the beach:
