It seems that our brain was designed to believe in the existence of a superior mind to follow or to entrust our fate to. This thought would partly contradict the Darwinian concept that our evolution depends solely on our adaptation to the changes we undergo; but even so, we feel the need to believe in someone or something external around us, to which we are somehow exposed.
This is because humanity is not only an exact science, we are also made up of sometimes conflicting, and fortunately! also irrational, emotions and feelings. This makes the history of humanity a fascinating tale full of twists and turns. In this issue of The Cube we wanted to carve out a fragment of this humanity where we recount the need to have a ‘life companion’ to thank for our victories, to ask for help or to cry over our defeats.
“Silvarum patrona et domina, Diana, es” Witches evoked the lady of the forests and the beasts through spells and forbidden rituals observed during the sabbaths so that she could favour their exploits. These practices have been known since the 2nd millennium B.C., where spells were performed on statuettes representing opponents in order to ensure their defeat. Among all the peoples of antiquity, as well as today’s primitive peoples, a conquering race regarded the cult practices of the subjugated peoples as instruments of witchcraft, and often the deities of the vanquished became the demons of the victors. But this is not the end of our ability to believe beyond the comprehensible, such as averting evil through amulets, which have appeared in mythology all over the world and symbolise omens.
We rely on the existence of otherworldly beings to explain the realisations of works that seem to defy human expertise because they are too big, too heavy or too complex, just think of the Egyptian pyramids or Stonehenge; where, perhaps, the idea escapes us that it is simply the result of the strength and capacity of our humanity to bring to life some of the most enigmatic and great works on earth.
So, instead of entrusting our fate to spells, or aliens from outer space, shouldn’t we believe a little more in ourselves to write the pages of our future?
