If we don’t feed our ancestors, they become hungry ghosts, tormenting, cursing, and frightening us.

Greece and Rome appear to us in a character absolutely inimitable; nothing in modern times resembles them; nothing in the future can resemble them. ~ Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City

In his still valuable work The Ancient City, Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanlges reveals the rules by which Greece and Rome were regulated, particularly through their religious cult. There is no doubt that the “conditions of human government” are now much different from theirs (and have changed several times in between). Fustel denies that the changes result from chance or by force as sole explanations.

The cause which produces them must be powerful, and must be found in man himself. If the laws of human association are no longer the same as in antiquity, it is because there has been a change in man.

This change, he says, is in the “intelligence”, that is, the ways and patterns of thinking. In other words, besides genetic changes which occur slowly over time, there is a psychic evolution, a change in consciousness, which takes place more quickly. Any attempt to base society on genetics alone (race of the body), without taking into consideration the race of the soul, will certainly fail. Likewise, any attempt to “go back” to the past, without grasping the changes in thought and forms of consciousness, will be futile.

Nevertheless, it is Gornahoor’s position that there is a continuity with our past, and we cannot understand ourselves without taking this past into account. The past leaves traces in our thought, whose effects on us are real, even if they operate unconsciously. The Hermetic method is depth, so we need to extract the genetic sources of our psychic lives by digging into these layers of thought, a process which is called “reading the Akashic record.” Usually, as Guenon and Evola do, this involves contemplating symbols and myths of bygone eras, though in this case, we also have written documents.

This is much more than an idle intellectual exercise, since the cult of the dead has been the keystone to the religion of Romanity. Fustel notes that concern for the dead has been part of Indo-European religion. The most ancient generations, long before there were philosophers, believed in a second existence after the present. They looked upon death not as a dissolution of our being, but simply as a change of life. Fustel rightly points out that they rejected reincarnation, even in the Vedas. They recognized two post-mortem states:

• The “celestial abode” that was reserved to the few great men, the heroes.
• A shadowy underground existence attached to the body, family, and place.

The ancient Greeks and Romans buried the dead with clothing, utensils and weapons. “They poured wine upon his tomb to quench his thirst and placed food there to satisfy his hunger.“

It was important to bury the dead so they would they would have a dwelling place. The soul with no tomb was a wandering spirit, vainly seeking the repose he craved (we still say “may he rest in peace”). As a wandering ghost, he could never find the offerings and food it needed. He became malevolent, tormenting the living, bringing disease, ravaging harvests and frightening them. Thus, unlike the moderns whose funereal ceremonies are meant to assuage their grief, the ancients performed them for the benefit of the dead.

The ancients did not so much fear death in itself, but were tormented by the possibility of an improper burial. For example, after one sea battle, the Athenians executed the victorious generals for neglecting to bury the dead.

Periodically, the tomb would be visited by the family, who brought gifts of flowers, wine, and food, again for the benefit of the deceased. In the aftermath of the battle between Sparta and Persia, a contingent of the Spartan army visited the battle site annually for at least 600 years.

Yet the duty of the living was not just to provide for the dead, but also to worship them as gods of a sort. This was common to the Romans, Hellenes, and also the religion of the Rig Veda and Laws of Manu. A neglected soul became a malignant spirit while an honored one protected the family. Every pater familias was priest in his own home and kept a hearth where he would perform the rites. Hence, a man was concerned that he die without a son who would provide for his needs in the afterlife.

Fustel mentions a further development, or a deeper understanding, where the dead were not always confined to their tombs and their souls lived together in an underground abode. Here rewards and punishments were distributed according to the lives men had led in this world. Fustel ridicules the earlier beliefs and sees a contradiction where we see a deepening. But we are not so inclined to ridicule our ancestors nor to accept that such practices and beliefs that dominated so much of their daily life were vain and useless exercises. He also explicitly contrasts it to his Catholic faith in order to protect it from his objections to pagan practices, while, again, we see continuity and deepening.

For Catholics, unlike neo-Christians, had a similar dual outlook. The Saints, like the Heroes, went to Heaven while the rest were relegated to a lesser existence in Purgatory where they are in need of the prayers and offerings of the living. Further, the postmortem state is dependent on the quality of the life one lived, in contrast to neo-Christians who reject any such correspondence.

It is clear that we in the West no longer honor our dead, not just those who oppose the past, but unfortunately even by those who claim to be recovering Tradition. Hungry ghosts are wandering the land in revenge, despoiling our cities, and frightening our people. Steps to take include:

• Honor and remember the dead. Don’t speak evil of them.
• When celebrating the lives and accomplishments of our heroes, remember them on the death day, not their birthday.
• Have sons and pass on Tradition.

And this is the tradition we pass on:

Here has passed the greatest people of history, and the most astounding of human civilisations: that people must have taken grandeur from the Egyptian, brilliancy from the Greek, strength from the Roman, and, beyond the strength, the brilliancy, and grandeur, something more valuable than grandeur, strength, and brilliancy—immortality and perfection.
~ Juan Donoso Cortes