| Blog Home | The Spada Panthalica | 2021.11 |
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Spada Spenta Panthalica Spada means army in Persian and Spenta means life-promoting. The Spada Spenta Panthalica is the army that promotes the pantothalia or common flourishing of life on Earth. The word Spenta is also found in Spentaman or Holy Spirit. So more loosely the Spada Spenta could be translated as 'Holy Army'. The Spada can also just be called the Spada Spenta or the Spada Panthalica. The Spada is made up of many distinct Corpores - or organised movements. Each corpus would likely have its own noia (consciousness/identity) with a specific 'daena' (world-view or religion). Some of these may be explicitly Mithraic in character, but people of other religious identities can also be part of the Spada Spenta within their own corpores (corps). It might be helpful to imagine the King Cyrus the Great returning back to this world as the leader of the modern Spada Spenta. How can we play our part in the Spada Spenta? 1. Build up the internal strength of a specific spada corpus (organised unit of the spada) by advancing its: i) Metaphysics/Ideology/Religion ii) Technical understanding of the world and cause and effect. iii) Wisdom about living well and creating a good-functioning society iii) Solidarity within a corpus and between corpores iv) Practical skills and capabilities v) Set up our own systems of living and communication etc 2. Attract new people to your spada-corpus i) By providing an attractive story that inspires ii) By showing up the evil of the tyrants iii) By getting our message out to people - especially those who are already dissatisfied but can't make sense of their dissatisfaction. 3. Attend to the need for defence including 'offensive defence' - where we degrade the operational effectiveness of the tyrant's army (the Azorda) - so that its attacks on us are weakened. This requires detailed and accurate knowledge of how the Azorda operates, plus the motivation and ability to make the necessary interventions. NB1 We should be careful to distinguish between an army as a process and the people whose actions support the army - who are 'in' the army. We should try to respect the dignity of all people including those who are doing evil whether unknowingly (which is the most common case) or knowingly. It is very tempting to think that 'we' are the good people in the Spada Spenta (the life-furthering army) and 'they' are the bad people in the Azorda (tyrant horde) , however the 'they' could be our friends and relatives and the same person might be supporting both the Spada and the Azorda in different ways at the same time. NB2 When we say Cyrus is returning to lead the Spada Spenta we are not saying that he will act in exactly the same way this time as he did in his first coming. Rather we are saying that he has the right spirit to take on what is a new task today. Indeed we may even consider that he made mistakes in his first coming, but that he has learned from experience and will do better this time. A Mithraist might imagine Cyrus as filled with the spirit of Mithras and being an incarnation or avatar of Mithras. However Cyrus has an appeal beyond any single religion - both as evidenced by his toleration and promotion of the different religions of his empire - and his continuing good name among Christians and Jews. As far as I know he is not objectionable to other main religions such as Islam or Buddhism. November 4021 |