It's SPELLBINDING - How 3rd Millennium Marketing Magic Affects You!

it’s Spellbinding... how third millennium marketing magic affects YOU...

Imagine enthusiastically buying something for hundreds of times the sum cost of its contents or its real value, being directed around a supermarket, driven by hidden forces to purchase products that will make you ill, willingly taking on board ideas that were complete anathema to you, being captivated by a logo to desperately want to go somewhere you’d never heard of before, voting for a political party or supporting a church that you hate. Imagine being divorced from your physical, mental and spiritual powers, cutting your relationships with your loved ones and being taken from your real home to live in a world of tawdry make-believe. Imagine that, in this make-believe world, your voice and power and work was being used to support activities keeping the majority of your family in poverty and sickness. You’d have thought that either you’d gone crazy, or you’d been hypnotised, or that someone had worked some powerful magic on you. Not far from the truth, in fact.

Marketing - the force that’s fundamentally affecting your life in these and many other unseen ways - is simply today’s magic. Marketeers are our new Wizards, Witches and Shamans called in by governments, by companies and by organisations to use their magical powers to change our perceptions. Not only of ourselves and our world but also, and in particular, of the Wizards’ employers. We see their effects all around us. A quick detached glance at our world now will show you the clearly visible and prodigious effects of Magic’s young offspring and the powerful and influential positions of its proponents.

So, what’s wrong with that? In principle nothing. They’re both just power-methods for use or abuse. Magic, after all is a fundamental cornerstone of our inheritance that must be embraced if our relationship to our Earth is not to be lost. Marketing simply uses many of Magic’s time tested disciplines. But wizards and magicians are pretty honest about what they do - they are a funky-looking bunch after all aren’t they? With all those pots and pans, rat’s tails, potions, magical spells and queer costumes... Marketeers, however, are not at all as overt about who they are or what they do. And their white shirts, grey suits and designer leisurewear enable them to blend in far too easily.

Anyway, although there is a great deal of complicated gobbledygook talked about both of these branches of witchcraft, at root both Magic and Marketeting are very simple and easy to relate to once you know how they work. In explaining the marketing process in terms of its Magic"Spellbinding" takes a step by step route to explode myths, shine light on processes and provide a fascinating and exciting insight to the arcane methods used by current day marketeers.

We have no difficulty with witchcraft. We have no difficulty with marketing. We do have difficulty with those who spellbind others for their own gain without recognition of their true responsibilities. This is their prompt.

So, what is marketing? What is magic? What is a spell and how do you get bound by it? Who are wizards, shamens, witches, Wossit all about? How do they all connect? And why is it important anyway? How does it affect me?

Well. whatever you may believe, marketing is NOT about selling you stuff that you don’t want or need. It may have that effect but, in practise, selling you what you don’t actually want is a bit of a dead end street and not at all effective or sustainable. No, marketing is much more powerful than that. The best definition currently in place is "The practice of identification and fulfillment of human beings’ perceived needs". Dr Abraham Maslow told us us all about it in his "Hierarchy of needs". His basic premise was that once we’ve got air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat and sex to procreate...surprise, surprise...we want more. Understanding just what more we want and delivering it effectively is what marketing is all about...and always has been.

Magic isn’t just tricks, or is it? Could be that it’s "The art of influencing the course of events by the occult control of nature or of the spirits" - that’s the OED definition anyway. And what do we want after we’ve got the air, water food and sex? We want to keep what we’ve got don’t we? Correct! According to Dr Maslow the next step up the hierarchy of needs translates as security. And security is definitely NOT going to be provided by someone who’s just as likely to nick the good air, water, food or sex we’ve already got, but influencing the course of events (occult or not) in our favour has got to be a strong contender in the security-blanket provision department.

Spells do work, of course, and, here, the definition is..."A form of words used as a magical charm or incantation". They weren’t much use before we learnt to speak, but when we did, they must have come out in great gushes. By then, presumably we’d realised that Dr Maslow was on a winner and security was our next aim. Simply deliver a good form of words (with or without music) and get the superior powers on our side to deliver the security that we can’t provide. We’re not all good writers of course so simply every nascent faith had a good selection of "Off the shelf" spells on offer. Call them what you will; spells, prayers, mantras, affirmations, charms, meditations, the power of words has a long and powerful history.

Much as we want security and all the stuff higher up on ol’ Dr Maslow’s H of R, we often feel that we’re not qualified to provide it for ourselves. Particularily when it involves life, death and illness situations. Just imagine...you’ve got the air, food water and sex, you’ve even got a nice cave to live in when one of your family falls ill. You can’t afford to lose them just yet...the continuance of the human line is in question at this stage. Time to call in the professional. Someone who solves your problems for a living. Ring the Shamen, Witch Doctor, Warlock or Wise Woman. He or she does a few incantations, gives the patient some herb tea, makes a bit of a sacrifice. Sorted, one way or the other. If there’s a successful result, you’ve got to wonder how many more rungs of Dr Maslow’s hierarchy can be delivered by your consultant, haven’t you?

"An attraction or fascination excercised by a person, activity or quality." That’s spellbinding for you. This has got to be a really dangerous area because attraction and fascination are often the first delightful little steps on the road to addiction - and we all know how bad that is. Anyway, it’s the spell that binds you, isn’t it? That little old form of words (nowadays with pictures too and often music) delivered to the right person at the right time and in the right place that does the trick. Gotcha!

So, let’s see how all of these occult and less occult practices have developed over the ages...

It all started with Adam and Eve...

Genesis is amazing, it is simply one of the most informative and enlightening parts of the Bible. However much you neg it out (Darwin and all that stuff), however much it doesn’t stand up historically, Genesis provides the most powerful message possible to mankind through the ages - and particularily now. Everyone should read it.

So, let’s deal with the Adam and Eve bit in marketing-magic terms. The lucky young couple, our progenitors, are happily and naively playing around in Eden. From where we’re standing, life simply couldn’t be better. They’ve got everything they need, air, water, food and sex, and, living in the garden that God had specially planted for them, they probably had a lot of other good things too. Superb weather, lovely views, friendly animals, flowers and fields and all that stuff if the pictures are to be believed. Not to mention the difficult things that they haven’t got, in-laws, kids, tax inspectors, journalists, belly buttons etc. And there’s only one rule - "Don’t eat the fruit on the "Tree of Knowledge of good and evil". Life couldn’t be better eh? Well, they don’t know that of course, having no experience or knowledge of anything else, they’re not in a position to make a comparison are they? So don’t be too hard on them for screwing it up for us all.

You’ve got to admire the serpent’s approach. What he didn’t say to Eve was "Go on eat one of those apples on the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil" did he? Serpent adopted a classic marketing approach - he must have had a good trainer even in those days - we won’t say who.

First he identified Eve’s need - more than she’d got already. Then he helped her identify it. "Eat the fruit off ALL these nice trees can you Eve?" said he. "No" said Eve "Not the fruit from the Tree of knowledge of good and evil, cos God said that we’d die if we did". Now it’s a bit of a giveaway, labelling a tree "Knowledge of good and evil", it could have been called "Death Tree" or "Sorrow Tree" or "Tastes really foul tree" if God really didn’t want them to eat it but that would be telling a lie wouldn’t it? And there would be no point in demeaning the brand at this early stage. The real mistake He made at the beginning was not to get eye contact from both Adam and Eve when he warned of the tree’s dangers. Remember he told Adam BEFORE Eve was created out of Adam’s rib . Anyway, the serpent, still following a classic marketing approach, implied that not only could Eve climb a step up the hierarchy (know a bit more - like a god), but also she’d get a nice meal from the apple. So the serpent did a bit of a demonstration - nice tasting fruit, good looking, smells good plus join the god-class with added benefits when you take a bite. How could she refuse? "Come here Adam - you’ve got to try this, it tastes wonderful and it makes me feel like a goddess" "Job done" hissed the serpent as he slithered off, shortly to be perpetually cursed to eat dust, hated by women and to be trodden on.

It is strange that this mind-altering fruit makes Adam and Eve want to put clothes on rather than take them off. Maybe sex has changed sides in the last millenia, or maybe God has, who knows. Seeing Adam hiding with clothes ON (a dinky fig leaf apron by all accounts), God knows that they’ve eaten of the apple. Adam blames Eve as usual and Eve blames the serpent. God tells Adam he shouldn’t have listened to his wife and Eve shouldn’t have listened to the serpent and the serpent - well, it’s his nature after all. They all get banished with various curses, but not before God’s made both Adam and Eve some nice suits of skins to wear in their exile. Having now fallen from grace, Adam and Eve and their offspring (us) are destined for lives of sorrow outside the Garden of Eden. And remember one thing. The King James version of the Bible says "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked".

Interestingly enough, the only antidote for the knowledge of good and evil imparted by the forbidden fruit is the fruit of the "Tree of Life" which, as it says, gives everlasting life, still in the Garden of Eden, and now guarded by a host of Cherubims and a flaming sword. What an opportunity for serpents/marketeers in later years!

The First Riviera...

Forget all those notions about the Flintstones wearing animal skins, hunting mammoths and getting their women by banging them on the head with clubs. That’s just another Hollywood myth. If you were thrown out of the garden, where would you go for a bit of rest and relaxation after such a traumatic event? Down to the seaside, naturally. Pack bags, adjust skins, make sure the wife’s with you, pop off to the seaside to forget about all that "Tree of Knowledge" and "Tree of Life" stuff. Maybe meet a few new friends to chill out with a bit.

So...it’s pretty natural that the earliest remains (120,000 years old) of modern man were recently found at Klasies River Mouth in South Africa . A beautiful Indian Ocean beach on the lea of a cliff with sea-cut caves - and it’s quite natural that our forebearers learnt to live there pretty well. Not only was there plenty of air (the good sea variety) and water (remember the river), but feast after feast of amazing sea food...and sex, well, everyone knows about shellfish don’t they?. Just imagine the barbie parties - yes they DID cook their food. - mussels, clams, and limpets seals and penguins provided glorious beach banquets. When a change of menu was required they hunted and roasted giant buffalo, eland, and grysbok.

Forget that old garden, this is the life! Sea air, superb fresh food, water, cave shelter with glorious views, marvellous surroundings, wonderful climate. Garden of Eden by the sea. No serpents or rubbish about trees of knowledge.

BORING. Don’t know what you want, but you want something more, something different.
Well everything gets boring and frustrating after a while doesn’t it? However wonderful it is. That’s the human condition. Got everything. Need more. But here, of course, it wasn’t the enchanted Garden of Eden. No God around to tell you off or show you what to do, no serpent to show you an alternative route. Anyway, you’ve eaten the apple, now you should know right from wrong.

Who knows what happened? Maybe one of our ancestors had a dream, got ill and febrile, had a near-death experience took a mind-altering drug, or just had a bit of insight. Maybe even, our predecessors were visited by men from Mars or Pluto or wherever. There was certainly a small change in our perception, a tiny little paradigm shift. Only we probably didn’t call it that then, not having all those big words.

But at some time we tried drumming and dancing and we enjoyed it. At sometime we used a bit of ochre to draw with and we liked the result. At sometime we had a dream and led the group to a hunt with a good result.. At sometime we tried herbs that cured an illness.

Let’s imagine the scene 120,000 years ago on the South African Riviera. We’re at the Klasies River Mouth beach just by Hermanus and Plettenburg Bay on the glorious Garden Route. Sea air we’ve plenty of, and good food and water and shelter, and plenty of sex and kids. One night someone gets ill, maybe it was the seafood, maybe it was a bad bit of fruit, maybe it’s just a touch of ‘flu. Who knows. She, we’ll call her Ida, gets a raging temperature, and has one of those vibrant, colourful dreams. In her dream, Ida thinks she’s an Eland and is with a bunch of her mates in a forest clearing. Ida wakes up in the early hours of the morning, gets the lads together and takes them to the forest clearing of her dream. Lo and behold it’s full of antelopes ready to grab and eat. Barbeques for days and nights on end.

Well, eventually the Eland we’ve caught runs out. Seals and penguins are out of season and we’ve got bored with shellfish. Apart from that, the eland gives us a superb protein buzz. More antelope please. But where are they? Ida told us where they were the last time but she was recognizably in an altered state of consciousness and she’s OK now. It’s full moon and we’re all feeling a bit iffy. Shit. Stamp the ground in frustration. Shout and scream. Bang a few things together. Pretty soon we’re all joining in, banging and dancing powered by our frustration, energy and the full moon. We’re Trance Dancing. Altered states of consciousness all round. Eland visions abound. Off to get them. Barbeques again. Superb! Good game.

This Eland-dreaming, trance-dancing business is more important than it may seem on first sight. Not in itself, because it’s really the most natural thing in the world and hardly a development that may have given rise to civilisation-as-we-know-it Jim. Except for what we did next...

Back on the beach we’d been using ochre for fun and pleasure for ages. It’s effect on the skin looked nice and you could do pretty and satisfying patterns on stone with it. So some wag, well acquainted with the ochre, just remembers and depicts the trance-dance scene in ochre on the wall of a cave. And, the next time we fancy a plate or two of Eland stew, the depiction helps us to remember what we did the last time to get it. It’s the first How-to manual, and ochre lasts longer than humans. Not a problem in itself except that it assists us to see ourselves objectively - you can imagine the complaints from the participants about how they were portrayed. Anyway, seeing ourselves objectively is something that we’ve not specialised in since Adam and Eve. Remember the bit about "knew they were naked"? That’s objectivity for you. Well, a hundred thousand years or so later the Hindus will bang on about it. They call it dualism.
So, by now, the principles of marketing and magic are pretty well established. We’ve got a self-help manual in the form of a rock-painting, we’ve got a trance-dance, and, above all, we’ve got the objectivity which will enable us to identify our needs/wants/desires for ourselves and others.

On to the Towers of Babel and the First King to Spin...

A hundred thousand years and a lot of walking later, some of our ancesters arrived in the fertile crescent. Full up with all the necessities of life (air, water, sex and food) and prolific luxuries (lots of wild goats and sheep for bar b q’s) plus numerous reeds to make dinky benders with, the fertile crescent must have represented yet another "Paradise-on-Earth".

Our ancesters, by now, were pretty sophisticated, after all travel broadens the mind as they say. Truly, their minds were pretty broad which is to say that they had asked a number of deeply philosophical questions about their surroundings and answered them. Like "What’s that bright thing in the sky that comes up and down all by itself every day?" Answer; "Gotta be a god, that". And "What’s that bright thing in the sky that comes up and down at night and gets bigger and smaller?" Answer: "Gotta be a god that". So, it was a pretty small step to work out that all the things out of our ancesters control and with palpable effects on their lives... like the sun and the moon and the stars and the wind and the water were controlled by hidden forces. Gods as it were. It must have been a further very small step to work out that if these gods were friendly rather than agressive, life would be infinitely better.

You can just imagine our forebearers tramping around the fertile crescent from the Persian Gulf thinking these things out and you can imagine them discussing these issues at the nightly barbeque. Anyway, decisions had, eventually, to be made and the female vote must have come out on top. So Innana (aka Ishtar) and Erishkigal - both female - were voted top gods. It was decided that Innana ruled over everything above the Earth and Erishkigal over everything below. Various shrines were created for them both and regular sacrifices made to keep them friendly. Hunting and herding and gathering and walking carried on as normal. Up and down the fertile crescent we went.

The nightly barbeques became much more fun too. Now we had a couple of gods, we could dream and tell stories about them. They, as gods, didn’t have our human constraints so they could do lots of wild and exciting things.. The stories could be riveting! Only one problem. Good tales, of course, entailed a rather larger cast than just the two main characters. "Let’s dream up some more to make the stories more colourful, relevant and exciting." "Four thousand supporting god-cast members be enough?" "Cool!"

As ever, we want more, don’t we? It follows, then, that the gods want more too, doesn’t it? "A little shrine? That’s not nearly enough! Lets build a lot of them in one place - that would be better, they’d get more, we’d be bound to get more." So it was decided and Eridu was built on the Euphrates close to the Persian Gulf. A holy city if ever there was one, much like a 5,000bcVatican.

Just look at wonderful Eridu "Home of the gods", plenty of water, plenty of wild wheat and barley, presumably plenty of space for sheep and goats and certainly plenty of very desirable temples. What do you think? "Why not just stay for a while, we can look after the temples and the gods in them and we won’t have to carry on walking." "Brilliant idea!" "Just for a while, though, don’t want to get too soft eh!" So the idea of a city peopled by gods and humans was born.

Forget about Prague, forget about Venice forget about Ibiza, if Uruk was still around and operating it would be the biggest tourist draw going, a "World Heritage" site par excellence. Zillions would flock there. Purpose-built for people and gods, just down the plain from Eridu, Uruk must have been the ultimate in social innovation. The architecture was simply astonishing, described as "multi-functional, civic and egalitarian...highly visible proofs of collective enterprise". Just imagine a city, four thousand years before Athens and twice its size, full of magnificent temples, glorious gardens and massive ziggurats. Yet the beautiful buildings and lovely spaces were not Uruk’s only claim to fame. Even though the god-cast list had expanded and Innana had to share her supremacy with An the Sun God, Uruk was very much her city.

"Mother of cities", Uruk must have been a very feminine and extraordinarily colourful place, famous for its population of beautiful, voluptuous, curly haired available women and where Innana herself was said to stalk the bars at night. And the festivals! The homages to Innana! Staggering. Hundreds of naked, shaven men bore vessels full of produce to her shrines, music, dancing, drinking and lots and lots of debauchery. Uruk was a sensual, sensational, scintillating city. Mind you, if you’ve read the story of Innana’s descent to the underworld to see her sister Eriskigal, you’d think that she was pretty well worth revering too!

There is one particular advantage of living in a city. Because you’re not walking and hunt-gathering all day and putting up your bender at night, you can do a lot of other things. Like invent reading and writing, and the wheel for instance and conduct more international trade. All of which they did in Uruk. So, for quite a while, Uruk seemed like a pretty good place to be. Pretty egalitarian, stunning architecture, super festivals, plenty to eat and drink, lots of culture, varied entertainment, glorious female deity. It had to stop, after all we can’t carry on enjoying ourselves for ever can we? Inevitably, Uruk rose and gradually entered its decline.
The basic sales motivators don’t change. They are fear and greed. We want more and more and more, when we get what we want, we’re frightened of losing it. So, let’s make sure from the start that we don’t lose what we’re going to get. Let’s get a man in. New man, New empire, New media.Who knows who he really was or where he actually came from but Sargon was certainly the right man at the right time.

You can imagine Uruk by now, lost the plot a bit (or the connection with the gods, maybe). The ignorant hunter-gatherer hordes are outside the city walls doing horrible uncivilised hunter-gatherer things and lobbing over the occasional dead sheep. Life is certainly not as joyous as it used to be. You feel like you’re in a prison behind those walls and no amount of writing is going to get you out of it. Good ol’ Sargon. He came and conquered the city and offered the protection required to a grateful citizenry., Apparently he was related to Innana. so that’s alright then. He made his peace with a male city god, Enlil too by parading Uruk’s ex king Lugalzagesi in a neck iron to the Enlil gate at Nippur, a close by city. He then went on to conquer the rest of the known world (from the Arabian gulf to the Med) and build a new city - Akkad - to rule his new empire from.

So, just who was Sargon? Well, if you believe his PR, and Sargon was incredibly good at PR, a born communicator you could say, Sargon was somebody incredibly special. A 21st century ad power hungry communications specialist in a 23rd century bc environment.

You could well imagine a meeting taking place with Sargon, a few scribes. a couple of spin doctors and his ablest lieutenants present. "We’ve done brilliant so far Sargon, but this thing can really rock." "We need to give you a treatment, set up a few media events, get the opinion formers on message, and let everybody know that we’re going places, cool? Says the communications officer. "Right on" says Sargon "Why don’t we dredge up that old story about me being the secret son of the En priestess, found in the bullrushes at Kish, brought up by a gardener and made king because Ishtar-Innana loved me and saw my star quality...that’s a good start". "Fabulous" says marketing specialist "That’ll get the women’s votes, the priests’ and the merchants - they all like a self-made man and with both male and female deities onside - we’ll be on to a winner" "Scribes - how many tablets can we get this story in, and how many runners can we get for the idiots that can’t read?" "Oh, and how many steles can we get erected in the cities?" "Stelae" corrects the chief scribe "Thousands and thousands of tablets and at least one stele in each city - in really prominent places, don’t worry about the word of mouth thing, everybody’s interested in you after what you did to Lugalzagesi last week" "But have you forgotten we don’t have TV yet? Our sculptors have done really nice things in bronze recently, we could do some superb images of you to show how godlike you are." "And remember, stelae and statues both have unveiling ceremonies, very effective mini-media events in themselves".

"Excellent" says Sargon "But don’t forget the key issues - thirty-four battles won, lots of city walls destroyed, we rule the known world beneath the sky, 5,400 men eat in front of me daily and we’ve got a new city" "OK, let’s roll it out" says communications officer "And I’ll get the tablet team to work on some follow up stories about you having adventures and solving merchant’s disputes and stuff, OK?

Sargon - the first king to spin? He certainly couldn’t have done it without the gods. Spellbinding or what? Let’s examine what actually happened, and understand a little more about the power centres in Sargon’s Akkad.

As soon as we entered consciousness, we needed gods. Well, to be precise, we needed protection and affirmation. The world was simply too complex, dangerous and unpredictable for our fragile consciousness to deal with, without a little assistance from on high. We needed gods-protector who could affirm our reason for existence, ensure our sustainability and bring some other-worldly pzazz into our pedestrian lives. Enter Innanna, beautiful, fertile, sexual, generous, powerful, brave, emotional, loving, passionate, jealous, warlike and demanding. The eternal Goddess of the Heavens. And enter Erishkigal, Innana’s dark sister, doyenne of death and rebirth, destruction and creation, Goddess of the Earth and the underworld. Between them they provided for all our simple needs. Nourishing wombs for our food and our offspring, light and warmth for them to grow. Security in continuity as day followed night and season followed season. And they were approachable, after all the story was that they’d created us because they were fed up with doing all the work themselves. Male deities weren’t any more prominent than men, confined to hunting, seeding and protection duties, fertility not being a primarily male role.

The cities changed everything. By the time we’d got to Uruk, we had two more things...a city that had walls, and a pantheon of gods that needed (mainly male) priests to serve them. Both of these prizes had to be protected spiritually and physically, and, as ever the protectors claimed the prize. The soldiers and the priests shared the booty between them. Gradually our pantheon changed from feminine to masculine, as did our attitudes, and our leaders.

To get those little extras, we need to barter. You want jewellery from India? Great, swop it for some wool or cereals. You want some nice pottery? Super, trade some goats for it. Problem. How to get your stuff there and theirs back...no wheels. Just imagine trade without wheels, it’s pretty near impossible. So the Sumerians invented them. Problem solved...trade can now begin.
There’s not a lot of point in having a lot of anything without knowing just how much you have and, if you’re buying or selling, the figures just don’t stack up until there are any. Not having written numbers really does put the kybosh on international trade too. If you want to swop your flock of goats for some silver or gold, incense or Nubian slaves, the bloke you’re swapping the goats with will want to know how many and of what he’s getting. Get a bit of wet clay, work out a few numbers, put in picture of goat. Now we’re talking...or writing even.You’ve got xxxgoats, plus you’ve got basic writing (pictographs, and later, cunieform). Wonderful, we’re reading and writing and doing trade. What an advance, Soon we’ll have scribes writing on tablets. What will the world come to?

If you thought that a writing tablet was a tombstone sized unwieldy lump of stone, think again. Think more...calculator or personal organiser size. Not only easily portable, but designed to look and feel beautiful too. And if you thought that tablets were made by muscled artisans diligently chipping away, think again, again. Think more erudite, artistic and scholastic scribe schools, producing elegantly designed and written tablets for the gentry, the merchants, the magicians, and the priest class.

The health service in Sargon’s Akkad was pretty good too, and it provided a much wider range facilities than we’re used to the medical profession delivering nowadays. Apart from the usual list of common ailments, Akkad’s magicians dealt with every sort of want and need you could possibly imagine. Like the priests, magicians provided an earthly link with the powers above and below, so the conditions that they could cure for you and the conditions that they could create for you were all pretty endless, just a question of how much, or what, you could pay. And you had two choices of therapy...the magician who intervened with the gods and/or the demons or the magician that prepared magical potions. The former sought to understand his client’s needs and how his occult associates may fulfil them, the latter spending his time creating and adapting his value-added brews to fulfil cures for his grateful patients.

OK. Now we’ve got a bit of a media industry, we know what’s happening. Now we can write, we also know what’s happened because we’ve written it down on tablets and stored them. We’ve got the present and past sorted out nicely so, there’s only one thing more to acquire in the time department - the future. Where’s that going to come from?

Look at it from a Sumerian point of view for a moment. The gods rule our world...that includes our great clock, the sky, in which the sun, the moon, the stars, all gods of course, traverse their paths and effect our lives. We know where they all were. we know where they all are...if we know where they’re all going to be, we know what’s going to happen to us too. In our immanent world, the heavens are ever present effecting each and every detail of our lives and understanding of their relationship to us is crucial. So, another, and very important, profession is born - asrology. The astrologer interprets the movements in the Heavens and how it is going to effect our lives on Earth. Apart from being pretty good at maths, to be effective, the astrologer has to understand a number of very important motivating factors in us and the gods who move the heavens around. This knowlege is pretty powerful stuff to be in possession of. It still is.

Finally, there are omens. It follows that, if the gods rule the entirety of the Earth and the Heavens, and they, being gods, don’t feel like talking to us in a straightforward manner...they would infer, rather than instruct us as to their requirements. Saying things straight wouldn’t be godlike, would it? After all when did you last get a "Post-it" note from an almighty being? However simple it would make life, it just isn’t done. So, no "Post-it" notes then. How are they going to tell us? Chicken’s entrails perhaps? Strange happpenings? Dreams? Slabs of rock from the shy? Anything really that’s unusual (and potentially godlike) would be a message. But how do you interpret a strange godlike happening. Simple, it’s cause, effect. and a little invention, perception and artistry from a soothsayer.

The principles must have gone something like this: 1) Rock fell out of sky and hit third tree on the left, three full moons later we have a four moon famine 2) many moons later rock falls out of the sky and hits second tree on the left, the soothsayer interprets this as a redheaded baby’s going to be born to one of the boss’s concubines. Simple isn’t it? Anyway, the whole omen/symbol process provided work for thousands of soothsayers...and still does. It’s still a pity that omnipotent beings don’t quite see language and thought as the omnipotent media that we do, isn’t it?

The seasons really need a chapter all to themselves, sleeping winter, awakening spring, fertile summer and dozing autumn. In harmony they and their weather combined with the Earth to provide everything we needed. But beware. Out of harmony - chaos and famine ensued. The seasons were naturally organised by the gods to give them all a chance at "Front of Stage". Angry or thwarted god = bad season = no food. Now there’s a job for a soothsayer/priest/astrologer to deal with!

Anyway, that’s the line up during Sargon’s empire. Soldiers, Spin Doctors, Priests, Soothsayers, Astrologers, Scribes, Merchants, the rest of us...and...at a distance...the gods. As we’ll find out, in the ensueing few millenia the names may change but the functions won’t.
To be continued…

Year of the Fat Wonderful Piggie

A good time to start, eh? At the beginning of a really prosperous and fun-filled year. Now we can explore marketing in all of its human and life-enhancing aspects...