kings

70:6.1Ef­fec­tive state rule only came with the ar­rival of a chief with full ex­ec­u­tive au­thor­ity. Man found that ef­fec­tive gov­ern­ment could be had only by con­fer­ring power on a per­son­al­ity, not by en­dow­ing an idea.

70:6.2Ruler­ship grew out of the idea of fam­ily au­thor­ity or wealth. When a pa­tri­ar­chal kinglet be­came a real king, he was some­times called “fa­ther of his peo­ple.” Later on, kings were thought to have sprung from heroes. And still fur­ther on, ruler­ship be­came hered­i­tary, due to be­lief in the di­vine ori­gin of kings.

70:6.3Hered­i­tary king­ship avoided the an­ar­chy which had pre­vi­ously wrought such havoc be­tween the death of a king and the elec­tion of a suc­ces­sor. The fam­ily had a bi­o­logic head; the clan, a se­lected nat­u­ral leader; the tribe and later state had no nat­u­ral leader, and this was an ad­di­tional rea­son for mak­ing the chief-kings hered­i­tary. The idea of royal fam­i­lies and aris­toc­racy was also based on the mores of “name own­er­ship” in the clans.

70:6.4The suc­ces­sion of kings was even­tu­ally re­garded as super­nat­u­ral, the royal blood be­ing thought to ex­tend back to the times of the ma­te­ri­al­ized staff of Prince Cali­gas­tia. Thus kings be­came fe­tish per­son­al­i­ties and were in­or­di­nately feared, a spe­cial form of speech be­ing adopted for court us­age. Even in re­cent times it was be­lieved that the touch of kings would cure dis­ease, and some Uran­tia peo­ples still re­gard their rulers as hav­ing had a di­vine ori­gin.

70:6.5The early fe­tish king was of­ten kept in seclu­sion; he was re­garded as too sa­cred to be viewed ex­cept on feast days and holy days. Or­di­nar­ily a rep­re­sen­ta­tive was cho­sen to im­per­son­ate him, and this is the ori­gin of prime min­is­ters. The first cab­i­net of­fi­cer was a food ad­min­is­tra­tor; oth­ers shortly fol­lowed. Rulers soon ap­pointed rep­re­sen­ta­tives to be in charge of com­merce and re­li­gion; and the de­vel­op­ment of a cab­i­net was a di­rect step to­ward de­per­son­al­iza­tion of ex­ec­u­tive au­thor­ity. These as­sis­tants of the early kings be­came the ac­cepted no­bil­ity, and the king’s wife grad­u­ally rose to the dig­nity of queen as women came to be held in higher es­teem.

70:6.6Un­scrupu­lous rulers gained great power by the dis­cov­ery of poi­son. Early court magic was di­a­bol­i­cal; the king’s en­e­mies soon died. But even the most despotic tyrant was sub­ject to some re­stric­tions; he was at least re­strained by the ever-pres­ent fear of as­sas­si­na­tion. The med­i­cine men, witch doc­tors, and priests have al­ways been a pow­er­ful check on the kings. Sub­se­quently, the landown­ers, the aris­toc­racy, ex­erted a re­strain­ing in­flu­ence. And ever and anon the clans and tribes would sim­ply rise up and over­throw their despots and tyrants. De­posed rulers, when sen­tenced to death, were of­ten given the op­tion of com­mit­ting sui­cide, which gave ori­gin to the an­cient so­cial vogue of sui­cide in cer­tain cir­cum­stances.

70:5.6At first the war chiefs were cho­sen only for mil­i­tary ser­vice, and they would re­lin­quish some of their au­thor­ity dur­ing peace­times, when their du­ties were of a more so­cial na­ture. But grad­u­ally they be­gan to en­croach upon the peace in­ter­vals, tend­ing to con­tinue to rule from one war on through to the next. They of­ten saw to it that one war was not too long in fol­low­ing an­other. These early war lords were not fond of peace.

70:12.3The king was the ex­ecu­tor of the mores, the orig­i­nal or un­writ­ten law. Later he en­forced the leg­isla­tive en­act­ments, the crys­tal­liza­tion of pub­lic opin­ion. A pop­u­lar as­sem­bly as an ex­pres­sion of pub­lic opin­ion, though slow in ap­pear­ing, marked a great so­cial ad­vance.

70:12.4The early kings were greatly re­stricted by the mores—by tra­di­tion or pub­lic opin­ion. In re­cent times some Uran­tia na­tions have cod­i­fied these mores into doc­u­men­tary bases for gov­ern­ment.

85:6.5But the wor­ship of man by man reached its height when tem­po­ral rulers com­manded such ven­er­a­tion from their sub­jects and, in sub­stan­ti­a­tion of such de­mands, claimed to have de­scended from de­ity.

55:7.2To out­ward and vis­i­ble ap­pear­ances the ac­tual rulers, or di­rec­tors, of such a world set­tled in light and life are the Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter, the Plan­e­tary Adam and Eve. The fi­nal­i­ters are in­vis­i­ble, as also is the Prince-Sov­er­eign ex­cept when in the mor­ontia tem­ple. The ac­tual and lit­eral heads of the plan­e­tary regime are there­fore the Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter. It is the knowl­edge of these ar­range­ments that has given pres­tige to the idea of kings and queens through­out the uni­verse realms. And kings and queens are a great suc­cess un­der these ideal cir­cum­stances, when a world can com­mand such high per­son­al­i­ties to act in be­half of still higher but in­vis­i­ble rulers.

69:5.85. Power—the crav­ing to be mas­ter. Trea­sure lend­ing was car­ried on as a means of en­slave­ment, one hun­dred per cent a year be­ing the loan rate of these an­cient times. The mon­eylen­ders made them­selves kings by cre­at­ing a stand­ing army of debtors. Bond ser­vants were among the ear­li­est form of prop­erty to be ac­cu­mu­lated, and in olden days debt slav­ery ex­tended even to the con­trol of the body af­ter death.

82:5.4Su­pe­rior groups, when iso­lated, al­ways re­verted to con­san­guineous mat­ing. The Nod­ites for over one hun­dred and fifty thou­sand years were one of the great in-mar­riage groups. The later-day in-mar­riage mores were tremen­dously in­flu­enced by the tra­di­tions of the vi­o­let race, in which, at first, mat­ings were, per­force, be­tween brother and sis­ter. And brother and sis­ter mar­riages were com­mon in early Egypt, Syria, Mes­o­po­ta­mia, and through­out the lands once oc­cu­pied by the And­ites. The Egyp­tians long prac­ticed brother and sis­ter mar­riages in an ef­fort to keep the royal blood pure, a cus­tom which per­sisted even longer in Per­sia. Among the Mes­o­po­ta­mi­ans, be­fore the days of Abra­ham, cousin mar­riages were oblig­a­tory; cousins had prior mar­riage rights to cousins. Abra­ham him­self mar­ried his half sis­ter, but such unions were not al­lowed un­der the later mores of the Jews.

82:5.7Many tribes fi­nally for­bade mar­riages within the clan; oth­ers lim­ited mat­ing to cer­tain castes. The taboo against mar­riage with a woman of one’s own totem gave im­pe­tus to the cus­tom of steal­ing women from neigh­bor­ing tribes. Later on, mar­riages were reg­u­lated more in ac­cor­dance with ter­ri­to­rial res­i­dence than with kin­ship. There were many steps in the evo­lu­tion of in-mar­riage into the mod­ern prac­tice of out­mar­riage. Even af­ter the taboo rested upon in-mar­riages for the com­mon peo­ple, chiefs and kings were per­mit­ted to marry those of close kin in or­der to keep the royal blood con­cen­trated and pure. The mores have usu­ally per­mit­ted sov­er­eign rulers cer­tain li­censes in sex mat­ters.

70:5.5It has been hard for man­kind to learn that nei­ther peace nor war can be run by a de­bat­ing so­ci­ety. The prim­i­tive “palavers” were sel­dom use­ful. The race early learned that an army com­manded by a group of clan heads had no chance against a strong one-man army. War has al­ways been a king­maker.

85:6.2Early man re­garded all un­usual per­sons as super­hu­man, and he so feared such be­ings as to hold them in rev­er­en­tial awe; to some de­gree he lit­er­ally wor­shiped them. Even hav­ing twins was re­garded as be­ing ei­ther very lucky or very un­lucky. Lu­natics, epilep­tics, and the fee­ble-minded were of­ten wor­shiped by their nor­mal-minded fel­lows, who be­lieved that such ab­nor­mal be­ings were in­dwelt by the gods. Priests, kings, and proph­ets were wor­shiped; the holy men of old were looked upon as in­spired by the de­i­ties.