The Asklepios cult flourished especially in the Hellenistic era, when the god encountered significant diffusion and popularity. The application of cognitive theoretical suggestions, along with a historical approach, can promote the understanding of the healing of diseases at the Asklepios temples and how people thought about and explained their experiences in his sanctuaries. This essay outlines the ways in which the Asklepios cult drew on the common ideas, conceptions and concepts shared by the people of the Hellenistic world. The construction of the Asklepieia, the propagation of the god’s healing power, the decision to visit one of his temples as well as the particular rules, norms, restrictions and actions, which the supplicants should follow, are presented as the product of the continual interplay of the embrained and embodied individuals living in that era and their social, cultural, conceptual and symbolic environment.
This paper suggests a cognitive approach to the Asclepius cult which may throw light on the supplicants' personal experiences of healing during the ritual of incubation. In particular, the possibility of healing at the Asclepius sanctuaries is presented as a potential result of the patients' placebo responses. The prerequisites of placebo effect as determined by Nicholas Humphrey are traced in the wider social and conceptual contexts of Greek antiquity and the specific religious context of the Asclepius cult. In this framework, it is argued that personal experiences of people, social information about the Asclepius' healing powers and the confirmation of this information by human doctors would have influenced how people "lived" an illness or a disease infliction, "appropriated" the religious beliefs in Asclepius, and experienced cures at the asclepieia. These cures could have derived from patients' self-healing mechanisms, but would have been perceived and conceptualized as "healing miracles" performed by the god. This preliminary study intends to show how cognitive approaches can enrich historical knowledge on the Asclepius cult and on supplicants' healing experiences, suggesting that such approaches may contribute to a better understanding of "lived religion" and of multiple religious experiences in various religious contexts.
This article suggests a bio-cultural approach to the Asclepius cult in order to explore the attractiveness and memorability of the religious ideas, myths, and narratives about the divine healer. The transformation of Asclepius from a mortal doctor to a divine physician is traced in mythical sagas developed in Greek antiquity. The interference of local religious, political and financial interests in the formation of myths are briefly presented. Then, the focus is shifted to the inner features that were embedded in the myths and attracted people's attention. Following Guthrie's theory (1992), it is suggested that the anthropomorphic perception of the ancient Greek gods was projected onto Asclepius. Boyer's theory (1996, 2001) of counter-intuitive concepts of religious ideas is applied to the myths of Asclepius. It is suggested that his actions, rather than the portrayal of his figure and character, are what violated human-intuitive expectations about the world, grabbing the attention of supplicants and becoming conserved in memory. Further, the correlation of intuitive ontological expectations and mundane knowledge acquired through cultural conditioning is examined. The healing inscriptions from the asclepieia seem to support the findings of research conducted by PorubanovaNorquist and her colleagues (2013, 2014), according to which violations of cultural expectations have similar effects in attention and memory processes as the counter-intuitive concepts. It is further suggested that the activity of Asclepius violated cultural expectations shared by people of the ancient Greek world. This activity was particularly salient because it pertained to human experiences of illness and disease, and revealed Asclepius' willingness to help the sick.
Asclepius was one of the most popular healing deities in Graeco-Roman antiquity. Patients suffering from various diseases resorted to his sanctuaries, the so-called asclepieia, looking for cure. Many inscriptions preserve stories of supplicants who slept in the abaton of the temples and claimed that they had been healed or received remedies from the god. The historical study may take into consideration modern (neuro)cognitive research on the placebo effects in order to examine the possibilities of actual healing experiences at the asclepeiea. In this paper, I take into account the theoretical premises of the placebo drama theory suggested by Ted Kaptchuk in order to explore the specific factors, including the personality of Asclepius, his patients’ mindsets, the relationship between them, the nature of the supplicants’ impairments, the employed or prescribed treatments and the ritual settings of the cult, which could have mediated health recovery, and contributed to the phenomenal success of the Asclepian therapies via the activation of patients’ placebo responses.
Healing, Disease and Placebo in Graeco-Roman Asclepius Temples narrates a story of religious healing that took place at sanctuaries dedicated to the ancient Greek god Asclepius, the so called asclepieia. The Asclepius cult, which attracted supplicants afflicted by various illnesses, appeared in Greece in the sixth century BCE, thrived in the Hellenistic period and spread throughout the Graeco-Roman world only declining during the final dominance of Christianity in the fifth century CE. This study analyses inscriptions from the asclepieia which were supposed to record personal stories of healing. Using the archaeological and historical evidence it looks at the placebo effect and the role it may have played in healing at the Asclepius sanctuaries in light of contemporary theories and neurocognitive research on placebo effects. It explores the specific biological, cognitive, and psychological processes as well as the external cultural and social influences that would have shaped personal healing experiences. It is the first historical study of the Asclepius cult which integrates theoretical insights into the human mind provided by neurocognitive sciences. It can be considered a cognitive historiography of patients who visited the asclepieia as supplicants which aims to deepen our understanding of past minds and, more generally, of human cognition.
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