The Anathemas Q-and-A: Why the Odd Title?

Given its name, it could be a novel about an eccentric family of exotic origin, but anathema is actually an ancient and provactive word used in English without translation.

Webster’s Dictionary cites it as derived from the Greek and meaning “a thing devoted to evil” although it previously signified “anything devoted” to a specific purpose. Immediately, we sense confusion here. The implication, however far-fetched, is that anyone or anything set apart in a special manner is somehow the servant of evil.

The Encyclopedia Britannica explores this turnabout in the word’s evolution. In the Old Testament, it explains, anathema designated a creature or object set apart for sacrificial offering. Its return to profane use was strictly banned, and such objects, destined for destruction, thus became effectively accursed as well as consecrated. Old Testament descriptions of religious wars call both the enemy and their besieged city anathema inasmuch as they were destined for destruction.

In New Testament usage a different meaning developed. St. Paul used the word anathema to signify a curse and the forced expulsion of one from the community of Christians. In AD 431 St. Cyril of Alexandria pronounced his 12 anathemas against the heretic Nestorius. In the 6th century anathema came to mean the severest form of excommunication that formally separated a heretic from the Christian church and condemned his doctrines.

Such reversals in the meanings of words are not unusual. Take the common word hot, which normally means something too warm to be bearable, but when the current generation says, “She’s hot,” hot means “extremely desirable.”

As the priest DuPont explains to the protagonist in the novel: “Beware of words, my friend. Over time, meanings change. In this case, the meaning reverses. Anathema, which now connotes the solemn condemnation of a person or thing as damned or cursed, originally meant an equally solemn dedication or setting aside of a person or thing as sacred, even divine.” (The Anathemas, p. 310)

The paradox inherent in the word anathema and the related practice of placing certain ideas out-of-bounds, a powerful form of mind-control, is at the heart of this novel. Thus, the title. Nor is it coincidence that the novels’s first line is: “It was as if there were a curse on him.”

Is it possible that centuries ago we were robbed, personally and collectively, of our true history, our immortal heritage, and then force-fed a myth about a rigid and unforgiving spiritual destiny that enslaved us to the robbers? Remember, man, that you are dust and unto dust you shall return!