The Seal of the Roman Pontiffs, arc of triumph in Orange, France.

Picture by Marianne Casamance.

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Today’s sharing from the Blue House of Via-HYGEIA is a natural follow up from the post ‘INSTAURATIO, The Roman Temple Founding Ritual’ by the late independent Belgian scholar André Charpentier (André Raeymaeker) (1934/2020) describing a detail part of the arc of triumph in Orange, France. Our Via-HYGEIA English translation from the original French.

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‘It was a fact that Rome, considered as the center of the ‘known world’ (Caput Mundi), was connected to its remote borders by an immense network of roads, all consecrated by the college of the Pontifs, or ‘makers of bridges’ as their name indicates, and it was the mean for the circulation of its influence throughout the territory of the empire. As the ‘instoratio’ ritual induces, during the sacrifices, the leading pontiff was ‘connected’ to the offered victim by strips of pure linen, establishing between them a vital link (psychic), hence their name, ‘vittae’. The image of the circulation of blood is induced and confirmed by the fact that the Latin ‘provincia’ (from the verb ‘vincire’, connecting or linking) literally means ‘territory attached ritually’ and irrigated by the ‘heart of the empire’, Rome. On every major building throughout the empire, the seal of the pontiffs was mandatorily affixed, as a kind of ‘nihil obstat’, to indicate the validity and conformity to the cosmic model it serves and emulates.’

Seal of the Roman Pontiffs with Aeolus ruler of the winds in its center
(Arc of Triumph of Orange, France)

The 4 alchemical elements, in order: Fire, Water, Air (Rose of the winds) and Earth,

followed by the spiraled cross (Lituus) of the Pontiffs and Augurs.

All about the Arc of Triumph

in Orange, France

here

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