I was reviewing an ancient history book the other day and again came across some fascinating facts and figures about places and people of the time and their exotic habits and curious beliefs and I thought maybe some of you find them interesting too, so I decided to share with you a few brief parts.
First I like to tell you, if I may, about the saints of a certain caste of the ancient Hindus (Cabalians as the author says) who go around naked with a big heavy bell, like an ear ring, hanging from their dick swinging and jingling all the way all time so people can hear the preacher is coming, (and to show that the holy man has absolutely nothing to do with women,) and they rush to receive the holly man and worship him and his bell and last but by no means what so ever not least, his swinging dick. The bell is so heavy and agonizing that the people have to (out of kindness that is, it’s not obligatory) they have to bring a stool for the man to put under his poor dick and let him rest for while when they are adoring him and burning aromatics under him, under the tired elongated dick; and they thank the holly man for putting up with the pain and enduring the torture for their sake, the man is actually paying for their sins with his penis and not peanuts you know. We say it's not fair, but who are we to judge the people who’s holy man has a four pound copper bell hanging from his dick?
Anyway, the people gather around him sit and listen to his preaching and when ever they talk or don't pay full attention, the nude priest puts his hands behind his head and jingles the bell majestically, so every body can see the miracle, see that the man means business, see that he is dangling the bell by pure will power. From that moment on they became all ears and eyes and at the end of the ritual they thank the great man kiss his thing and give him a drink, a cocktail you may say a mixture of bullshit and bull's urine and send him to the next village. And in this very caste there are other holy men whose specialty is suicide instead of dick dangling and they are rather brave I believe. Of course they can perform their art only once in their life time but that's no problem because there are many of them and they have a rule that they can kill themselves only one at a time so that people can watch and ask him if he is still here or there, and after they finished with him they can run to the other one and ask the same questions from him. They do it like this:
They dig a big hole in the ground make a reasonable amount of fire, not too much that burn the man in a jiffy, and the man goes down there and sits on fire up right and the people gather around him and ask him: "haven't you seen the paradise gardens yet? Any sign? Trees?"
He says: "not yet."
They ask again: "what about now, can you see the flowers? anything?"
He says: "Ah yes, but... wait a minute... no, not yet."
And the question and answer goes on. Unfortunately the narrator doesn't tell us more about this very interesting procedure and we don't know if one or all of these really nice guys see paradise at last or not; but my guess is that at least some of them should have seen some thing and told the poor people who were waiting for an answer around him; otherwise the people would lose interest. Of course except those who gathered just to have fun and had no beliefs in, in what ever it is.
Some of these suicide saints are real heroes, I mean real heroes, they stand the most horrible torture imaginable without screaming or making a sound, they don’t even budge, poor brave things. They sit absolutely still in the wilderness for so long that gradually birds of pray notice them, take them as dead go down on them and start eating them bit by bit. Unbelievable you might say, never the less it’s true. They say they don’t move till they drop dead. This is rather heavy I dare say, isn’t it?

But more interesting than the Indian rituals is how Tibet became a country, how people found it and stayed there and why they do the things that they do over there. As always to cut it short I just bring this part about how a man named Thabet became the first ruler of Tibet with the help of the Satan and how Satan taught him to eat flea and told him to tell his people to eat them daily too so they would have a long life and no enemies; and here the author comments: That's why people of Tibet eat flea all the time. (And we add that the Mongols used to eat them like any other thing they could lay their hands on; of course not after they conquered civilized countries and learned to eat caviar and filet mignon.)
This is what the narrator says:
When Thabet found Tibet the Satan send a few giants to kidnap him and take him on top of a mountain and then the Satan himself, disguised as an old man (this is really charming) as an old man came to him and said you must bow to me and worship me if you want to be the king of Tibet. Thabet bowed and this turned the old man on so he fucked him right there and then. Thabet didn't say anything, did not protest; either he had loved it or he knew better to quarrel with and old man over such a matter. Even so, after that the Satan, our guess is to show that he is in fact a fair man, bended over and told Thabet: "Now you do it to me my son."
Like they say it's indeed not easy to say no to an old man, specially to one who has fucked us in the ass right that moment. So Thabet fucked the nice fair old man either dutifully or because he loved to, and certainly it’s not any of our concern. After being fucked in the ass by an ambitious young man, Satan stood up cleaned his knees of dust and then he combed Thabet's hair with a wooden comb and his saliva, couldn’t find water up there you know, and kissed his forehead and told him to go and rule over Tibetans and always remember what he said about eating fleas and what they just did to each other. The author comments again: “That's why the Tibetans eat flea and fuck each other indiscriminately.”

No need to mention again that these descriptions belong to more than thousand years ago and no sensible person should be, and in fact is not allowed, to be offended in anyway.

Among our folkloric tales there are some stories about how a young outcast or the famous third brother, the youngest smartest luckiest brother, or that famous baldheaded guy who is again the luckiest and very clever indeed, anyhow, the lucky stranger with empty pocket and empty stomach arrives at a city and at the gate finds some respectable old citizens waiting for him or any other foreigner to elect him as their king. In most versions it's the lucky clever bald guy that enters the city, especially when the king must be chosen by a falcon that comes down and sits on the future king’s head. The bald guy buys a calf stomach pulls it on his head and attract the falcon, of course these stories like most folklorics are not very sensible and logical in their original forms and we are not suppose to ask that if they want to choose the foreigner, why need the falcon? Maybe it's for the ceremonial purposes, just a formality.
Anyway, the thing I'm going to tell you is about how we always thought that the precedure was really strange, ridicolous actually and not possible. We used to ask eacother: How come they can't solve this small problem of kinglessness between themselvse? why must they send those poor elderlies to stand there for God knows how long, waiting at the gate of that godforsaken city for a lost wanderer to appear at their gate so that they can ask, beg or force him to accept the crown and rule over them, why? It's sheer nonsense we used to agree upon, at end of every conference.
But later, again as the reasult of [philo] [sophia], love of understanding things, curiosity in other words, we found out that those stories were not necessarily fictitious, were not nonsense, but made sense indeed.
In fact they were derived from eyewitness accounts, those events were really happening in some parts of the world and kept happening for centuries later too. Maybe this genre(!) of tales had been introduced by those who either had seen that kind of king electing or heard about the strange costumes in far far lands from travelers. In fact among the reports of some famous travelers like Marco Polo, and our friend Foula's compatriot, the famous tourist, Ibn Batoutah and the likes of them we find some facts that without exaggeration are much more unbelievable than most of our tales. for instance like when we read in Ibn Batoutah's itinerary, travel’s diary, that how the nice friendly guests of an African emir (by an unfortunate misunderstanding really) had eaten the servant that had gone with them to show them the way to the guest house and the next morning these guests had send a delegate to the amazed emir to thank him on their behalf and especially because the servant was really yummy as they had said, was very delicious.
And thank to those guests who answered the son of Batoutah's question sincerely, we now know that the most delicious part of the human body is the palm of the hands. Is that why children keep licking and chewing their hands, by the way?
And again the son of Batoutah tells us about the costumes in some African and Asian countries that are more strange to us and more fascinating than most of our stories. and even more interesting are the reports of anthropologists and sociologists of the 19th and 20th century. About the subject of electing a foreigners as kings. We have reports that shows beyond doubt that being a king was so hard and painful job in some societies that nobody dared to accept the honor, to the extent that those responsible for finding a king, when secretly agreed upon some unsuspecting fellow countryman, had to ambush the poor "elected king" tie him down and trow him in a cellar without food and water until he agrees to accepts the scary challenge and becomes his people's king, because the king's life was the most miserable and painful life with no fun what so ever. The king’s body and soul and all things around him and every thing he touched at once became tabu and sacred. For instance the Incas used to burn instantly what ever their king Atahualpa (the last king of Peru) touched or wore once.
A very mild example of these miserable sovereigns was a mikado, a Japanese emperor.
His feet must not touch the ground, they carried him on their back; the sunshine wasn't allowed to shine on his sacred body even mild breeze was not allowed to pass over him; no razor was allowed to cut his hair or nails, you may rightly say that he would become a very scary creature indeed, but the so-called servants, the emperor torturers, were smart Japanese and found a way. Because they couldn't leave him to rot and die of dirt and diseases, because they couldn't find a mikado every few months, so they had to wash his sacred body, but how? no one was allowed to touch the live body of a god, the son or some other relative of the Sun. So the cheeky Japanese invented a theory and find a witty way to fool the sun and wash his son, without breaking the ancient sacred laws. They decided to wash him when he was asleep! How about that? Now, does anyone like to be a king? Any body!
Just one more thing; to finish this section neatly, I give you a few sentence from Sigmund Freud's [Totem and Tabu] as exhibit number one if it pleases the court. Quoting from Fraser and other noted anthropologists, he says: "in some western African countries, in [Sierra Leone] for instance, it's become so hard and difficult to find a king, (in early 20th century,) that they have to find an unsuspecting naive stranger and somehow trick him to the throne.
They had to hide behind the city gate, we guess, and jump an unsuspicious wanderer like the big cats they got there.
I originally wanted to say a few words about the lucky bald guy and how smart he is, but I unknowingly I went astray; sorry about that, and now that it's late and the post’s become long again, as always, we better leave that for the next session.