Introduction to Studies in Orphism
by Martin Euser, December 2019
It is with great pleasure that I have compiled the seven-part series on Orphism by F.S. Darrow,
A.M., Ph. D. (Harv.), that originally was published in the Theosophical Path from April, 1912 to
March, 1913 (see tuponline.org). This material is in the public domain, of course, and it seems
appropriate to offer this material to the Academia researchers, especially to those interested in NeoPlatonic teachings, which latter after all have drawn much from the Orphic tradition.
Darrow outlines the deeper meanings contained in the Orphic mystery teachings and makes some
connections to Egyptian and Hindu mythology.
The mysteries were always kept very secret to the non-initiated, dealing with deep spiritual,
psychological and even scientific matters. The notion of purification of the soul and its re-ascent
and merging with the divine-spiritual essence within is central in the mysteries. There have been
Mystery-schools in several countries, varying from India, Egypt, Greece, Italy, and other places.
In the course of time degeneration of mentality was taking place to such a degree, that these Schools
were closed. In the Renaissance, renewed interest in Greek and Latin culture made Neo-Platonic
teachings gradually available to the cultured people.
In the 19th century, interest in Oriental philosophy began to take a flight in the minds of people. A
Theosophical organization was formed to stimulate research into the underlying essence of religious
philosophies, varying from Buddhism, Hinduism, Kabbalah, Gnosis, and other systems of thought.
The idea of universal brotherhood was promoted as essential for the advancement of the human
race. The most important public figures in that circle as regards depth of teaching were, in my
opinion, H.P. Blavatsky and G. de Purucker, both rather unknown now and much underestimated.
After all, sensitive human beings always have intuited that there is more to life than mere sensepleasure and material well-being. They know that there must be some deeper truth hidden in
religion and that there have been living wise men and women in the world at some time in history.
Spiritual teachings cannot be understood by the brain-mind alone. A deeper faculty exists, intuition
or direct capturing or temporarily merging with the essence of a thing or situation; a registration of
the essential vibrations of people, situations, etc. This has never been taught at our schools and
universities, while in our current time it may be essential to survival of our civilization. Respect for
the natural world, the ecosystem, and the order that is expressed through it, is indispensible.
Scholars of diverse spiritual traditions would do well to take note of the above. A literal translation
of words and sentences seldom captures the deeper meaning of what is said. The requirement for a
true scholar is greater than that. In fact, studying esoteric traditions (including the Neo-Platonic
School) was always meant to stimulate the inner faculties of the human being engaged in such a
study. It is my hope that this compilation will contribute a little to that.
The following text is a merge from seven separate pdfs. In some instances, Greek text in a footnote
may be garbled. The reader is kindly referred to the original site of these texts.
25b
STUDIES IN ORPHISM: by F. S. Darrow,
I.
THE
(a)
MYTHICAL
Tm�
.......-.
... ....
... . H.
AND
THE
A. M., Ph. D.
HISTORICAL
< Harv.)
ORPHEUS
M YTHI CAL ORPHEUS OR THE MAGICAL BARD
P. ELAVATSKY, the first of the three Theosophical
Leaders, in Isis Unveiled says :
The fable of Aristaeus pursuing Eurydice into the woods
where a serpent occasions her death is a very plain allegory,
which was in part explained in the earliest times. A ristaeus is
brutal power, pursuing Eurydice, the Esoteric Doctrine into the woods where
the serpent, emblem of every sun-god - kills her, i. e., forces truth to become still
more esoteric and seek shelter in the Underworld, which is not the hell of our
theologians.
Moreover, the fable of Orpheus torn to pieces by the Bacchanals
is another allegory to show that the gross and popular rites are always more
welcome than divine but simple truth.1
The story of Orpheus and Eurydice has ever been a favorite theme
with the greatest poets of ancient and modern times, but its signifi
cance has not in general been recognized because most of the extant
traditions about Orpheus are mythical, that is, symbolical and allegori
cal truths, not historical facts. Nevertheless, it is possible to distin
guish the historical kernel around which these have been grouped.
Orpheus' supreme importance lies not in these legends but in the fact
that he was a religious reformer, one of the first to teach to the histori
cal nations of Europe the eternal truths regarding the origin of things,
the divinity of humanity and the immortality of the soul - the Truths
which were dramatically embodied in the rites of the Greek Orphic
Mysteries.
The myth of Orpheus, the Magical Bard, contains seven symbolical
moments: ( 1) his Divine Birth ; ( 2 ) his Sacred Quest as the savior
of the Argonautic expedition ; ( 3 ) his Mystic Marriage with Eurydice
and his mission as a divine teacher ; ( 4) his First Agony at the first
death of Eurydice ; ( 5) his Descent into Hades ; ( 6) his Second and
Final Agony at the second death of Eurydice, culminating in ( 7) his
Passion.
1. T HE DIVINE BIRTH
Orpheus " the far-famed Bard, the father of song sent by Apollo" 2
was according to tradition born in Thrace on Mount Olympus, which
district, according to Strabo, though in his day held by the Macedon
ians, had formerly belonged to Thrace, " for," he says, " Pieria and
l. Isis Unveiled, II, pp. 129-130.
2. Pindar, iv, Pythian Ode, vv. 176-7 ( 3 1 3 -3 1 5 ) .
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
257
Olympus and Pimpleia and Leibethra were of old Thracian mountains
and districts, . . . and the Thracians who colonized Boeotia dedi
cated Helicon to the Muses and also the cave of the Nymphs called
Leibethriades." s Orpheus was the son of the God of Light, the pat
ron divinity of Music, Apollo, and the Muse of Epic Poetry, Calliope.
When a mere child he was nearly killed by a venomous snake and was
saved only by taking refuge in a nearby sanctuary of Helios. There
fore ever afterwards the Bard annually worshiped the sun on the anni
versary of this event.4 Orpheus was then presented by his father
Apollo with the God's lyre and was given divine instruction until he
had become the most marvelous of musicians, capable of moving by
his music not only the gods and men, but also the wild beasts, the trees,
and the very rocks of the field.
Orpheus with his lute made trees
And the mountain-tops that freeze
Bow themselves when he did sing :
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung ; as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.
Everything that heard him play E'en the billows of the sea Hung their heads and then lay by.
In sweet music is such art,
Killing care and grief of heart
Fall asleep or hearing die.6
Where stern Olympus stands ;
In the elm woods and the oaken
There where Orpheus harped of old,
And the trees awoke and knew him
And the wild things gathered to him,
As he sang amid the broken
Glens his music manifold.e
At his sweet strains the rushing stream
Its uproar stilled, and all its waves
Paused in forgetfulness of flight ;
And while the waters stayed to hear,
The Tribes far down the Hebrus' stream
4. The frequency with which the symbolic
3. Strabo, x, 3 § 722, (Casaubon, 471 ) .
serpent reappears in the Orphic Myth is significant of the Bard's inner connexion both
with Helios and Apollo.
5. Shakespeare, Henry the Eighth, iii, 1. 3.
6. Euripides, Bacchae, vv. 651 ff. ( Murray) .
258
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
Deemed that the river was no more.
All winged creatures of the wood
And e'en the woods themselves came near
To listen ; or, if far on high
Some bird was wheeling through the air
To that sweet music swift he fell
On drooping wings. The mountains came :
Rough Athas with his Centaur herd,
And Rhodope, its drifted snows
Loosed by the magic of that song
Stood by to hear. The Dryads left
The shelter of their oaken trunks
And gathered round the tuneful bard.
The beasts came, too, and with them came
Their lairs : hard by the fearless flocks
The tawny Afric lion crouched ;
The timid does feared not the wolves ;
And serpents crawled forth to the light,
Their venom quite forgot. 7
And the spotted lynxes for j oy of the song
Were as sheep in the fold, and a tawny throng
Of lions trooped down from Othrys' lawn,
And her light foot lifting, a dappled fawn
Left the shade of the high tressed pine,
And danced for joy to that lyre.8
It is thus evident that there is a striking parallelism between this
part of the Greek myth and Isaiah's vision of the rule of the Messiah
during the millennium :
And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with
the hind ; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together. . . .
And
the cow and the bear shall feed ; their young ones shall lie down together ; and
the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my
holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the
waters cover the sea. . . .
Unto him shall the nations seek and his resting-place
shall be glorious.9
This parallelism was commonly recognized by the early Christians
who on many of their sarcophagi placed an exact copy, drawn from
Greek art, of the figure of Orpheus taming the Beasts by the power of
7 . Seneca, Hercules Oetaeus,
vv.
1033 ff.
(Miller) .
8 . Euripides, Alcestis,
vv.
(Way ) , spoken of Apollo, the Father, but likewise true of Orpheus, the Son.
9. Isaiah, xi, 6-10.
579 ff.
STUDIES
IN
259
ORPHISM
his magical music, and used it to represent the Good Shepherd. Gradu
ally, however, under ecclesiastical influence the wicked wild animals
were weeded out until the entire congregation consisted merely of mild
and docile sheep. The fact of this borrowing is further significant of
the real internal connexion which exists between Orphism and Chris
tianity. The early Church was correct in thus admitting that the proto
type of the mythico-historical figure of Jesus, the Christ, was to be
found in the noble and ascetic Orpheus.
2. T n E
SACRED QuEsT : ORPHEUS As THE SAVIOR
oF
THI<�
ARGONAUTIC EXPEDITION
The Argonauts were able to accomplish their mission successfully
only by the help of Orpheus, whose importance in the Saga of the
Search for the Golden Fleece is in itself evidence of the notable con
nexion between Orpheus and Apollo and Helios, for the solar key
unlocks many of the mysteries in the story of Jason's Quest.
The Argo could be launched only to the accompaniment of Orpheus'
lyre, whereupon it glided into the sea of its own accord. The Argo
nauts themselves were rescued from the seductive pleasures on the
I sland of Lemnos only by means of the Bard's magical music. The
Symplegadae, or the Twin Clashing Rocks, which threatened to crush
the Argo between them, were stopped in the midst of their wild move
ment by the same means and forever anchored fast at the mouth of
the Bosporus in the Black Sea, where they have remained to this day.
Then, too, the Heroes, when they neared the Flowery Isle of the Sirens,
became so entranced that they would have landed on the fatal shore
had not Orpheus saved them by striking upon his lyre. Thus all
escaped safely, except Butes, who flung himself into the sea and strove
to swim to the beach. Nevertheless, by the interposition of Aphrodite
even he was ultimately rescued. Also, it was Orpheus who lulled to
sleep the Colchian dragon which guarded the Golden Fleece. And
finally, when the Argonauts, crowned with success and accompanied
by the Princess Medeia, the witch grand-daughter of Helios, were re
turning, they were rescued from utter shipwreck only by the prayer
which Orpheus directed to the Mystery Gods of Samothrace as he
played upon the lyre - a myth which may indeed be the prototype or
the source of the stilling of the tempest on the Sea of Galilee by Jesus.10
1 0 . Matthew, viii, 23-27 ;
Mark, iv, 35-41 ;
Luke, viii, 22-25
260
THE
3.
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
THE MYSTIC MARRIAGE WITH EURYDICE ; AND ORPHEUS'
MISSION AS A DIVINE TEACHER
Hyginus and Apollodorus report that Orpheus was killed by a
stroke of lightning while sailing with the Argonauts, but the usual
form of the myth declares that after bringing the Heroes safely back
to Greece the sacred Bard journeyed to Egpyt where he was fully
initiated by the hierophants.
His marriage with Eurydice is not a beautiful love-story, although
so regarded of ten by the ancient poets and regularly by the modern,
but in the words of H. P. Blavatsky, " a very plain allegory," for it
is an almost inevitable characteristic of the God-man of the Mystery
Story among all nations to be represented as the Divine Bridegroom.
The Sacred Marriage, or rather the two Sacred M arriages, form the
intrinsic part of the Mystery-Story. The etymology of the name Eury
dice is enlightening. The word means " She of \Vide Power, Authority,
or Justice," hence, " She who is rich by reason of the right of Suc
cession " ; and what is richer in hereditary rights than the " Secret
Doctrine," which has been handed down from time immemorial by the
" Golden Chain of Succession " ? Also it is noteworthy that Orpheus
won his bride by the magic power of his music. Hymen, the God of
marriage, was invited to bless the nuptials with his presence ; but
although he attended, the omens were unpropitious, for his torch
smoked and brought tears into the eyes of all the guests. It is like
wise significant that after his Mystic M arriage Orpheus returned to
Pimpleia on Mount Olympus, where he dwelt in a cave and devoted
the rest of his life to civilizing and helping his savage neighbors by
teaching them the Mysteries which thereafter in his honor were called
Orphic.
4.
TnE FrnsT AGONY AT nm FrnsT DEATH oF EuRYDICE
Eurydice ( the " Secret Doctrine " ) , soon after her marriage to
Orpheus ( the God-man ) , was seen and pursued by Aristaeus ( brutal
power ) , who became enamored of her beauty. Thereupon Eurydice
died from a bite upon her foot, inflicted by a poisonous snake ( the solar
emblem, as noted before ) . The heartbroken Bard sang his grief to
all that breathed the upper air, gods and men alike. " Orpheus made
thee ( Eurydice ) , thee, all to himself on a lonely shore, thee at dawn
of day, thee at set of sun, his unending song. " 11
1 1 . Virgil, Georgics, iv, vv. 465-6.
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
261
Eurydice, the Thracian dames
Bewailed ; Eurydice, the gods,
\Vho ne'er had wept before ; and they
Who with forbidding, awful brows,
In judgment sit and hear the crimes
Long since committed, unconfessed,
They sat and wept Eurydice. 1 2
Finally, Orpheus wandered to the assembly of the gods on Mount
Olympus and in his endeavor to regain his lost Eurydice, although
warned of the perilous nature of the undertaking, obtained permission
from Zeus, the Father of Gods and Men, to visit the Lower Regions
alive.
5. T H E DESCENT INTO HADES
The Descent into Hades, like the Mystic Marriage, the Agony, and
the Passion, is an integral part of the Mystery-Story and will reappear
in the Christ-Story. Orpheus descended by means of the cave upon
the promontory of Taenarus, not far from ancient Sparta, and like
those other heroes, Heracles, Theseus, Odysseus, and Aeneas, reached
the Underworld alive. He charmed Charon, the aged ferryman of the
Styx and appeased the rage of Cerberus, the three-headed dog of
Hades, by his music, and finally reached in safety the thrones of Hades,
the king of the Lower World, and of Persephone, his queen, to both of
whom he sang his petition while he played his magical lyre. The dead
wept ; Tantalus, in spite of his endlessly unsatisfied thirst, stopped his
straining after the ever-retreating water; the vultures ceased to tear
and rend the ever-growing liver of Tityus ; Ixion's wheel stood still;
the Dana"ids rested from their ever-lasting task of filling the leaky jar
with the water drawn in a sieve; while Sisyphus sat on his rock to
listen. Then for the first time the Furies wept, and Persephone and
Hades her husband hastened to grant the poet's prayer by summon
ing the newly-arrived Eurydice who came, still limping because of
her wounded foot. Orpheus was permitted to take her back to Earth
but on condition that he should not turn around and look at her until
they reached the upper air. Mindful of this the Bard led the way,
while Eurydice followed. Unhindered they passed through the hor
rors of Hades while all things held their breath.
\Vhen through the doors of Taenarus
He made his way to the silent land,
12.
Seneca,
Hercules Furens,
vv.
578 ff.
( Miller ) .
262
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
Sounding his mournful lyre the while,
The glooms of Tartarus were filled
With his sad song ; and the sullen gods
Of Erebus were moved to tears.
He feared not the pool of the Stygian stream
By whose dread wave the heavenly gods
Make oath unbreakable.
The whirling rim of the restless wheel
Stood still, its breathless speed at rest.
The immortal liver of Tityus
Grew, undevoured, while at the song
The spellbound birds forgot their greed.
Thou, too, didst hear, 0 boatman grim,
And thy bark that plies the infernal stream
With oars all motionless came on.
Then, first, the hoary Phrygian
Forgot his thirst, although no more
The mocking waters fled his lips
But stood enchanted ; now no more
He reaches hungry hands to grasp
The luscious fruit.
When thus through that dark world of souls
Sweet Orpheus poured such heavenly strains
That impious rock of Sisyphus
Was moved to follow him.13
They sat and wept Eurydice,
Until the Lord of Death exclaimed :
" We grant thy prayer.
Away to Earth !
But on this sole condition go :
Do thou behind thy husband fare !
And look thou not upon thy wife
Until the light o f day thou see
And Spartan Taenarus appear." 14
6.
Tm<:
S:ecoND OR FrNAL AGONY AT TnE SECOND DEATH
OF EURYDI CE
Then did the goddesses of fate
Renew the exhausted thread o f life
For fair Eurydice.
But when,
Unmindful of the law they ga v e,
And scarce believing that his wife
13. Seneca, Hercules Oetaeus,
vv.
1061 ff.
14. Seneca, Hercules Furens, vv. 582 ff.
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
263
Was following, the hapless man
Looked back, he lost his prize of song ;
For she, who to the very verge
Of life had come again, fell back
And died again. 1 5
But soon, too soon, the lover turns his eyes
Again she falls, again she dies, she dies !
Now under hanging mountains,
Beside the fall of fountains
Or where the Hebrus wanders,
Rolling in meanders,
All alone
Unheard, unknown
He makes his moan.
Now with Furies surrounded,
Despairing confounded,
He trembles, he glows,
Amidst Rhodope's snows.16
Dimly thy sad leave-taking face,
Eurydice l
Eurydice !
Eurydice !
Eurydice l
The tremulous leaves repeat to me
11
Orpheus tried for a second time to follow Eurydice into the Lower
vVorld, but Charon repulsed him and refused him passage. For seven
days ( a significant number ) he remained on the banks of the Styx
without food or sleep. Then for seven months Orpheus sat in chilly
caverns or under the open sky beside the river Strymon, taking neither
food nor drink.
Beneath a rock o'er Strymon's flood on high,
Seven months, seven long continued months, 'tis said,
He breathed his sorrows in a desert cave,
And soothed the tiger, moved the oak with song. 1 8
At the end of the seven months ( again the significant number ) the
Bard withdrew to the higher and more wintry regions of Mounts Rho
dope and Haemus so that he might mourn in still greater solitude.
Alone over Hyperborean ice and Tanai:s the snowy, and fields whose marriage
15. Seneca, Hercules O etaeus, vv. 1083 ff. ( Miller ) .
16. Pope, Ode on St. Cecilia's
17. Lowell, Eurydice.
18. W. S. Landor, Orpheus and Eurydice in Dry Sticks.
Day, vi.
264
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
bond with Rhipaean frost is never severed, he would wander, mourning his lost
Eurydice and Hades' cancelled boon.19
He chose a lonely seat of unhewn stone,
Blackened with lichens, on an herbless plain.
He does no longer sit upon his throne
Of rock upon a desert herbless plain,
For the evergreen and knotted ilexes,
And cypresses that seldom wave their boughs,
And sea-green olives with their grateful fruit,
And elms dragging along the twisted vines,
Which drop their berries as they follow fast
And blackthorn bushes with their infant race
Of blushing roseblooms ; beeches, to lovers dear,
And weeping willow trees ; all swift or slow,
As their huge boughs or lighter dress permit,
Have circled in his throne, and Earth herself
Has sent from her maternal breast a growth
Of starlike flowers and herbs of odor sweet,
To pave the temple that his poesy
Has framed, while near his feet grim lions crouch,
And kids, fearless from love, creep near his lair.
Even the blind worms seem to feel the sound.
The birds are silent, hanging down their heads,
Perched on the lowest branches of the trees ;
Not even the nightingale intrudes a note
In rivalry, but all entranced she listens.20
7.
THE PASSION
While Orpheus, ever remembering his sorrow, was wandering on
Mount Rhodope, it is said a band of Bacchanals, the Bassaridae, fren
zied women-worshipers of D ionysus, met the wanderer and asked him
to play for them some gay music that they might dance, but when he
was unable to please the merrymakers because of his grief, the leader
of the women enraged at his sad notes shouted : " See yonder our
despiser ! " and hurled her j avelin, which, however, as soon as it came
within the sound of the magical lyre, fell harmless at the Bard's feet.
Thereupon the others began to throw stones, which also left him un
harmed, until the voice of the lyre was overwhelmed by the uproar,
when the maniacs tore him limb from limb and cast his head and his
lyre into the river Hebrus, down which they floated ever murmuring
sad music to which the shores responded.
19. Virgil, Georgics, iv, vv. 517-520.
20. Shelley, O rpheus.
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
265
See, wild as the winds, o'er the desert he flies ;
Hark !
Haemus resounds with the Bacchanals' cries -
Ah, see, he dies ! he dies !
Yet e'en in death Eurydice he sung.
Eurydice, still trembled on his tongue,
Eurydice the woods
Eurydice the floods,
Eurydice the rocks and hollow mountains sung. 2 1
\Vhat could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,
The Muse herself, for her enchanting son,
·whom universal nature did lament
When, by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His gory visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore.22
The Muses gathered the fragments of the body and buried them in
the district of Pieria on Mount Olympus at Leibethra, where ever
since, it is said, the nightingale sings more sweetly over the grave than
in any other part of Greece. Here too the river Helicon now flows
for some distance underground, although legend declares that origin
ally it flowed above ground throughout its entire course, but when the
women who slew Orpheus wished to wash off the bloodstains in the
Helicon, the river straightway rushed beneath the ground that it might
not share in the pollution. Later, at the time of the destruction of
Leibethra the urn with the ashes of the Bard and the pillar marking
the grave were moved to the neighboring city of Dium. Upon this
pillar was inscribed the following epigram ; which, it should be noted,
records a variant tradition from that described above, inasmuch as
Zeus is said to have slain Orpheus by lightning because the Bard, like
Prometheus, revealed the Mysteries of the Gods to men.
Here the Bard buried by the Muses lies
The Thracian Orpheus of the golden lyre :
Whom mighty Zeus the Sovereign of the skies
Removed from earth by his dread lightning's fire.23
After the murder, Dionysus is said to have metamorphosed the Bas
saridae into trees.
As the head floated down the stream the dead lips still murmured
" Eurydice," and while his soul passed for the second time to Hades to
rejoin his Mystic Bride, twice-lost, he incessantly called " Eurydice,"
21. Pope, Ode
on
St. Cecilia's Day, vi.
23.
Diogenes Laertius,
22. Milton, Lycidas, vv. 58 ff.
Proemium, iv.
266
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
until the brooks, the trees, and the fountains he had loved so well,
re-echoed the longing cry, repeating it over and over again.
Even, then, while the head, rent from that pale marble neck was carried float
ing down Oiagrian Hebrus' flood, Eurydice, the lifeless voice of the cold tongue
with latest breath kept calling -Ah ! my poor Eurydice !
Eurydice ! the banks
returned all down the stream.24
The head drifted across the Aegean and after a long lapse of time
reached the Island of Lesbos, unharmed by the water, still singing
and still freshly bleeding. Just as it touched the shore an infuriated
serpent ( again the solar emblem ) strove to insert its fangs, but Phoe
bus Apollo drove the viper away and turned it into stone with its jaws
still gaping. Then, at last, the Bard rejoined his lost Eurydice, at
whose side in the Fields of the Blessed he walked, gazing his full with
out fear of penalty.
The head and the lyre were both preserved in the Island of Lesbos
in an oracular hero-shrine within the sacred precinct of Apollo, to
which in later times pilgrims flocked even from distant Babylon, and
among those who thus sought the guidance of the dead Prophet was
Cyrus the Great. It is also related that N eanthus, son of Pittacus,
the Sage-tyrant of Mitylene, because of the many wonders formerly
wrought by the magical lyre, was so eager to gain possession of it that
he bribed the priest of Apollo. Whereupon the young man with the
lyre in his bosom stealthily left the city by night and as soon as he
reached the open country began to strike the strings under the belief
that he too would be able to move rocks and trees, but he failed so mis
erably that the dogs of the neighboring villages straightway fell upon
him and tore him to pieces. Now, the Lyre, at the intercession of
Apollo and the Muses has been placed among the stars, where it
forms the constellation Lyra. Such, in outline, is the ancient myth
of Orpheus the Magical Bard. It conceals a historical basis to a con
sideration of which we shall now turn.
(b)
Tm! HISTORICAL ORPHEUS OR THE EARLY RELIGIOUS REFORMER
Of the life of Orpheus, the man, the great religious teacher and
reformer, who was born in Thrace, spent most of his life at Pimpleia
on Mount Olympus, and lived ( perhaps ) about 1 250 B. c., in contra
distinction to the Magical Bard, little is known except possibly his
father's name. Diodorus Siculus says :
24. Virgil, Georgics, iv. vv. 523-527.
STUDIES
IN
267
ORPHISM
Charops, grandfather of Orpheus, gave help to the god Dionysus, who i n
gratitude instructed him in his sacred Mysteries ;
Charops handed them down
to his son Oiagros and Oiagros to his son, Orpheus.
Orpheus was a man o f
natural genius and superlative training, who introduced many changes into the
rites of the Mysteries :
hence they called the rites which had their origin in
Dionysus, Orphic.25
In the Rhesus which has come down to us among the plays of
Euripides, Orpheus is referred to as a God-man, the Prophet of
Dionysus, who
'neath Pangaios' rock
Dwelt, god-revered by them that knew the Truth.26
And Aristophanes declares :
First Orpheus withheld us from bloodshed impure, and vouchsafed us the
Great Revelation.21
Strabo adds :
Near the city o f Dium is a village called Pimpleia where Orpheus lived.
He was a man of magical power in both music and divination and taught the
rites of the Mysteries - thereby obtaining many followers and a great influence .
. . . . Some accepted him willingly but others . . . attacked and slew him.28
It seems certain therefore that Orpheus, poet, philosopher, prophet,
musician, and theologist, who came " not to destroy but to fulfil," had
that charm which has ever attended the greatest of the religious
teachers - the charm which creates devoted followers and disciples ;
and on the other hand murderous enemies, traitors, and assassins.
Furthermore, it is noteworthy that the earliest traditions connect
Orpheus not with Dionysus but with Apollo, although the name of
Orpheus is written large upon the mystery-worship of Dionysus.
Says Eratosthenes :
Orpheus did not honor Dionysus but considered the Sun to be the greatest
of the gods, whom also he called Apollo ; and arising during the night, he ascended
before dawn the mountain called Pangaion that he might first catch sight of the
Sun, therefore Dionysus was enraged and sent the Bassaridae against him, as the
poet Aeschylus says 29 and they tore him to pieces and scattered his limbs abroad,
but the Muses collected them and buried them in the place called Leibethra.30
These statements are highly important although apparently Era
tosthenes failed to understand the inner relationship between Apollo
v.
25. Diodorus Siculus, iii, 65.
26. Rhesus, vv. 972-3 (Way) .
27. Aristophanes, Frogs,
1032 ( Murray) .
28. Strabo, vii, frgs. 1 7, 18, 19.
29. Aeschylus, in his lost play,
entitled the Bassaridae.
30. Eratosthenes, Catasterismi, xxiv.
THE
268
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
and Dionysus. Apollo is the Day-sun, and Dionysus the Spiritual
Night-sun. The sacred dress worn during the Mysteries is significant
of this symbolism, consisting as it does of the crimson robe over which
was hung from the right shoulder the sacred fawn-skin, whose spots
represent the heavens at night, the moon and the stars, while the third
element of the Mystic Dress, the golden belt, symbolizes the rays of
the Spiritual Sun. This is proved by the following quotations, which
might easily be multiplied. Proclus, the ancient Platonist, says in his
Hymn to the Sun : " They celebrate thee ( the Sun ) as the illustrious
parent of Dionysus." And in an Orphic verse occurs the statement
that " he is called Dionysus because he whirls in circular motion
through the immeasurably extended heavens," while Macrobius quotes
still another verse as follows : '' The Sun whom men call Dionysus."
Lastly, in the Eumolpic verses we read : " Dionysus with face of
flame, glistens like a star with his rays," and in Aristophanes' Frogs
the chorus of Mystae sing :
Come, arise, from sleep awaking, come the fiery torches shaking,
0 Iacchus ! 0 Iacchus ! 31
Morning Star that shinest nightly.
Lo, the mead is blazing brightly.32
In explanation of this night worship of the Sun, the following
words of H. P. Blavatsky in Isis Unveiled are very interesting :
Hence we may understand why the sublimer scenes of the :Mysteries were
always in the night.
nature ;
The life of the interior spirit is the death of the external
and the night of the physical world denotes the day of the spiritual.
Dionysus, the night-sun, is therefore worshiped rather than Helios, orb of day.33
It is thus evident that Orpheus was a prophet of the Religion of
Light, a worshiper of the Spiritual Sun in its twofold aspect of Apollo
Dionysus, and reformed the popular orgies held in honor of Dionysus
by introducing the Mystery-worship into the earlier rites, and as a
result was himself slain by the votaries of the old, popular, degener
ated worship, as is established out of the mouth of many witnesses.
Later his tomb became a hero-shrine. Thus, it is said by the scholiast
to Euripides' Alcestis, who quotes the early philosopher Heracleitus
as his authority, that " Orpheus set in order the religion of Dionysus
in Thrace on Mount Haemus, where, it is said, are certain writings of
3 1 . The Mystery-Title o f Dionysus in the Eleusinian Mysteries.
32. Aristophanes,
Frogs, vv. 340-344 ( Rogers) .
33. H. P. Blavatsky, Isis L'nveiled I, Before the Veil, p. xiv.
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
269
his on Tablets." 34 Therefore, it is probably certain that the Orphic
religion of ancient Greece sprang from the blood of a real teacher and
reformer, one of the great benefactors of humanity.
Eurydice, the Mystic Bride, is the divine light within. The Muses
who gather up the scattered fragments of the Bard's body are the
repentant Maenads, 35 his former murderers ; that is, the worshipers
of the older unreformed Dionysiac worship, who subsequent to the
Passion were converted to the new teachings. They knew not what
they did, when in their state of frenzy. This conversion of Maenad
to Muse is exactly parallel to the reform of the wild and unrestrained
Bacchic worship into orderly and ascetic Orphism, the transformation
of brutality into noble restraint and righteousness under the refining
spirit of music and law.
The marvelous myth of the Magical Bard has misled some of the
best classical scholars into a denial that Orpheus was a historical figure,
a denial which apparently has the support of Aristotle. Such scholars
declare that Orpheus was originally an Underworld God, the counter
part of Dionysus.36 This hypothesis, however, fails to account for
several features of the myth, and it ignores the almost unanimous tes
timony of antiquity in regard to the historical existence of Orpheus,
and does not explain the very significant fact that Orpheus is filled
with the spirit of orderliness and grave earnestness, typical of Apollo,
but diametrically opposed to the popular conception of Dionysus. His
torically, then, Orpheus was a mighty religious teacher, mythically a
wonder-working musician. 37 Orpheus, the man, reformed the common
worship of Dionysus by teaching the eternal truths of the inner light,
the divinity of humanity, and the immortality of the soul. He was a
worshiper of the Spiritual Sun, whose only prayer was that voiced
in the beautiful paraphrase of the Gayatri :
0 Thou who givest sustenance to the Universe,
Thou from Whom all proceed, to \Vhom all must return,
Unveil to us the face of the true Spiritual Sun, now hidden by a disk of golden
light :
That we may see the Truth and do our whole duty
As we journey toward thy Sacred Seat.
Hence his mythical association with both Apollo and Dionysus.
The declaration of Diodorus Siculus that " the whole mythology
34. Scholiast to Euripides, Alcestis, v. 968.
35. Vide the suggestive words of Miss
J. E. Harrison in her excellent Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 2d. Ed. pp. 463-4.
36. E. Maass, Orpheus, pp. 127-72.
37. Miss J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena, 2d. Ed. pp. 454-73.
270
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
of Hades " was brought from Egypt into Greece, and that the Mys
teries of Osiris are the same as those of Dionysus, and those of I sis the
same as those of Demeter,38 when linked with the similar statements
of Plutarch in his Isis and Osiris, throws light upon the tradition that
Orpheus was initiated by the hierophants in Egypt. In fact there can
be no doubt but that the Mystery-god Zagreus is substantially the same
as the Egyptian Osiris.
The following words of the ancient Platonist Proclus in his Com
mentaries on the Republic of Plato furnish a suggestive and important
key :
Orpheus because of his perfect knowledge is said to have been killed in various
ways :
for the reason, I believe, that the men of his age understood the Orphic
Harmony ( that is, the mystical teachings of Orpheus ) only partially : inasmuch
But the
as they were unable to receive a universal and perfect knowledge of it.
Lesbians best understood his melody, and therefore, perhaps, the head of Orpheus
separated from his body is said to have been transported to Lesbos.
Fables of
this kind, consequently, are related of Orpheus as well as Dionysus, and because
he was the leader in the rites of Dionysus, he is said to have suffered the same
fate as his god.39
This does not imply, I think, that Proclus intended to deny the
Passion of Orpheus, as a historical fact, but that he meant to explain
the origin of the myth of the Magical Bard, which has arisen from
the teachings given by the historical Orpheus in regard to the Mystery
god within. The traditions have clothed the religious reformer with
many characteristics taken from the Greek story of the Mystic Savior.
However, among the later teachers of Orphism there was not a St.
Paul to conceive of the idea of identifying the prophet with his pro
phecy by making the religious teacher himself the incarnation of the
God-man savior. Therefore although a mythical Bard Orpheus has
been created by reflection from the teachings of the historical Orpheus,
the religious reformer, yet the teacher has remained more or less dis
tinct from his teaching ; that is, he has never been thoroughly identified
with Zagreus. the Mystery-god, whom he preached, although the myth
of Orpheus is in itself an adaptation from the Mystery-story.
Orpheus is thrice-crowned victor by his divine music ( that is, his
mystic teaching) : on earth over men, beasts, trees, and rocks ; in
heaven by obtaining permission from Zeus to descend to Hades alive ;
and victor in the Lower World by his success in persuading Persephone
38. Diodorus Siculus, i, 96.
39. Produs to Plato's Republic, p. 398.
WHERE
IS
IRISH
SPOKEN ?
271
and Hades to let Eurydice return to earth, if only for a time. His
lyre of seven strings with its divine harmony of the human heart made
perfect by suffering, embraces all within its universal compass, and
though we have forgotten its complete harmony we can still hear frag
ments of the lost notes ; and the impulse transmitted to historical
Europe by its ancestor of sacred poetry and of music, its primeval re
vealer of the eternal truths, may still be felt by those willing to stop
and listen.
What wondrous sound is that, mournful and faint,
But more melodious than the murmuring wind
Which through the columns of the Temple glides ?
It is the wandering voice of Orpheus' lyre,
Borne by the winds, who sigh that their rude king
Hurries them fast from these air-feeding notes ;
The waning sound scattering it like dew
Upon the startled sense.4°
The figure of Orpheus, the son of Oiagros, prophet both of Apollo
and of Dionysus, will, in the true History of Religion, which remains
still to be written, be placed in honored company with Gautama the
Buddha and Jes us the Christ.
WHERE IS IRISH SPOKEN? by a Connaught-man
DISCUSSION on the above question was raised by a paragraph in T H E T H EOSOPHICAL PATH for December, in which
�
the translation of Donnelly's A tlantis into Irish was suggested. 1 Afte r a live!y skirmish among brandish ers of
_ format1on the question
_
� second- 1an d m
was re f erred to an
advanced student of Irish who spends months every year in the heart
of Gaeldom. Here is the substance of his pronouncement :
As regards Donnelly's book it would be more relevant to inquire
where Irish is read than where it is spoken ; for the two areas, so far
from coinciding, would only very slightly overlap.
Everyone knows that the places where the natives would under
stand Irish and could speak it if they liked, are in the northwest, west,
and southwest, besides vVaterford, O'Meath, etc., etc. - about one
third of Ireland. But everyone does not realize that the ability to
speak Irish is, literally, in inverse ratio to the ability to read it. There
A
�
_
_
_
40. Shelley, Orpheus.
318
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
denies the antiquity of man also implies his antiquity, since the theories
of the biological evolutionists demand an enormous length of time for
the carrying out of their supposed process of evolution from the lower
animals.
In other words these speculations are not consistent.
To sum up- the answer to the question propounded at the begin
ning may be given as follows.
The reasons why so few human bones
are found are ( 1) that there were fewer men to shed them; (2) that
men burned or entombed their bones instead of scatterin g them about;
( 3 ) that we have not yet found more than a very small fraction of
what there is to be found.
STUDIES IN ORPHISM : by F. S. Darrow,
II.
A.
M., Ph.D. (Harv.)
THE TEACHINGS OF ORPHIS�f
Tm:;; IDEAL 'vVoRLD
1.
JNTRODUCTIOX
THERE is good reason for believing that the legend of
Orpheus in Greek Mythology grew around and par
tially obscured the actual life of a great prehistoric
religious reformer in Greece, of whom Thomas Taylor,
the Platonist, says:
This alone can be depended on. from general assent, that there formerly
lived a person named Orpheus, who was the founder of theology among the
Greeks, the institutor of their life and morals, the first of prophets, and the prince
of poets - who taught them their Sacred Rites and :Yiysteries, and from whose
wisdom, as from a perennial and abundant fountain, the divine -:\fuse of Homer
and the sublime theology of Pythagoras and Plato flowed.1
No less than six different men of the name of Orpheus were known
to antiquity, but the original Orpheus, the founder of those Mysteries
which ensure the salvation of mankind, the interpreter of the gods,
who revealed the knowledge of Things Divine, poet, musician, theolo
gist and mystagog, seems to have lived about the middle of the thir
teenth century before Jesus Christ.
However, historic Orphism, which
was evolved from the teachings of Orpheus, comes to the forefront in
Greek religious life particularly during two widely separated ages.
namely. during the sixth century before Jesus and during the first
1.
Thomas Taylor,
The Mystical Hymns of Orpheus.
STUDIES
IN
four centuries of the Christian era.
319
ORPHISM
It is noteworthy that both of
these periods witnessed a religious activity and awakening, extending
throughout the civilized world- an activity which ran its course not
only in Greece and Rome but in Egypt, Persia, India, and China as
well.
Our principal sources of knowledge in regard to the earlier
Revival of the sixth and fifth centuries are Empedocles, Pindar, Euri
pides, Aristophanes, Plato, and the Orphic Tablets, which date from
the fourth century
Il. c.
Our principal authorities for the later period
are the I\eo-Platonists and their opponents the early Christian Fathers.
The history of Pythagoreanism both in its earlier and later forms,
and of later Platonism, is intimately connected with that of Orphism,
for in the words of Proclus:
The whole theology of the Greeks is the child of Orphic m ystagogy. Aglao
phamus first taught Pythagoras the ::\1ystic Rites of the Gods, and next Plato
received the perfect knowledge of such things from the Pythagorean and Orphic
writings.2
Three figures stand out during the earlier period of historic Or
phism as of especial importance, namely, the Cretan prophet, Epirneni
des, guardian of the Dictaean Cave on Mount Ida, wherein, tradition
says, the infant Zeus was nurtured; the philosopher, Pherecydes; and
the scholar Onamacritus.
Of Greek cities, Athens and Croton seem to
have been among the most important centers of this earlier Orphism.
Pherecydes, who is reported to have been an early teacher of Pythago
ras, is represented as the first literary editor of the Orphic Sacred
\!Vritings.
T�1at he was well-fitted for the task is attested by the state
ment that he had been initiated into the Mysteries of the Phoenicians,
Chaldaeans, and Egyptians, as well as into those of Orpheus.
Further
more, it is known that he taught the complete immortality of the
human soul, its eternity, and its rebirth, in his great prose work on
Theology, which unfortunately is no longer extant, except for a few
fragments.
Onamacritus, one of the scholars connected with the
court of Peisistratos, tyrant of Athens ( 560-527
B.
c.), is also men
tioned as an editor of the Orphic Literature and it was probably large
ly due to his influence that the rites of the Eleusinian l\1 ysteries were
modified so as to include the Orphic Mystery-1\1yth of Dionysus
Zagreus, wh.o was identified with the Eleusinian divinity Iacchos, the
holy babe.
Several other Orphic editors, like Zopyrus of Heraclea and
Orpheus of Croton (not to be confused with the original Orpheus),
2.
Quoted by Lobcck, Aglaophamus,
p. 723.
320
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
are little more than names to us. In the fi fth century before Christ
vast quantities of Orphic literature were in circulation at Athens, and
we know the titles of about forty different works which are no longer
extant. 'vV e possess only the Orphic Hymns, a collection of more than
eighty invocations used in the Mysteries ; the Lithica, a poem on the
Nature and Engraving of Precious Stones for use as Talismans ; the
Orphic Argonautica, a poem reciting the story of Orpheus' connexion
with the Argonautic Expedition ; and various miscellaneous frag
ments. Orthodox scholarship dates all these, in their present form at
least, during the later period of historic Orphism, although a just
reaction in favor of the recognition that their subject-matter goes
back to very early pre-christian times is already noticeable.
The real Greek religion is not, as is commonly supposed, to be
found only in the mythology of the anthropomorphic Olympians, but
( using the term pantheism in its true sense ) in the pantheistic worship
of the trinity consisting of Zeus, ( a divinity quite distinct from the
Ruler of the Homeric Olympus ) and the two many-named Chthonic
or Earth Gods, the gods of life, death, and rebirth : namely, ( 1 ) Zeus,
the Divine All-Father ; ( 2 ) Dionysus, the divine son, both mortal and
immortal, the God-man, the Higher Self in man, the only begotten,
the first born, Zagreus, the mighty horned hunter, Iacchos, the holy
babe, B romios, the spirit of entheastic inspiration, the God-within,
Hades King of the Dead, the spiritual sun, the reborn Savior, the twice
born, the fire born, dithyrambos, He of the Twin Portals, the reascend
ed soul or perfected man, He of Many Names and Many Forms ; and
( 3 ) Rhea-Demeter-Kore, the divine mother-wife-sister-daughter, the
Earth Goddess, Persephone, the virgin queen of the dead, and Pherse
phassa, the risen dove-queen. Side by side with true Orphism were
many false and counterfeit cults, which always spring into being when
ever truth is proclaimed anew inasmuch as falsehood ever seeks to
cloak itself under a more or less formal semblance of truth. \Ve are
concerned with the true Orphism and consequently shall not deal with
its perversions.
The entire mythology of Orpheus is intentionally symbolical and
allegorical, as is distinctly stated by the ancients in the following
quotations. Proclus says :
The Orphic method aimed at revealing divine things by means of symbols, a
method characteristic of all writers on divine wisdom ( theomythia) .8
3.
Produs, Theo/., I, iv, 9.
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
32 1
Plutarch also testifies to the same fact :
It is clear from the Orphic poems and the Egyptian an<l Phrygian writings
that the archaic natural science both among the Greeks an<l non-Greeks was for
the most part hidden in myths - a secret and mysterious theology containing an
allegorical and hidden meaning.4
This was also known to the Early Christian Fathers, for Clement
of Alexandria says :
All who have referred to divine things, whether Greeks or non-Greeks, have
veiled the primal principle and have spoken the truth in riddles, symbols, allegories,
metaphors, and similar figures.5
And the author of the Clementine Recognitions declares :
All the literature among the Greeks dealing with the origin of antiquity is
based - primarily upon Orpheus and Hesiod.
Their writings, when considered
from the standpoint of interpretation, are found to be twofold, literal and alle
gorical.
While the people at large have clung to the literal interpretation, all the
eloquence of the philosophers and of the learned is spent in admiration for the
allegorical sense.6
In the face of such explicit testimony both from Pagan and Chris
tian authors, no one who is open-minded can deny that the Orphic
myths, to be rightly comprehended, must be interpreted allegorically.
Our clearest knowledge in regard to the allegorical interpretation
of Orphic theology in antiquity is gained from the Neo-Platonists.
One of the chief points to bear in mind is that Orphic cosmogony
represents the successive stages in the growth of the universe under
the figure of successive dynasties of gods, the earlier dynasty being
dethroned and supplanted by the later. Also number-symbology lies
at the basis of the whole system, the key-numbers being 1 , 2, 3, 4,
5, 7, 1 0, and 1 2, while a triadic structure is everywhere evident. For
example, there are two Diacosms or Worlds, the Ideal or N oumenal
World and the Material or Phenomenal World ; seven orders of
Heavenly Hierarchies, each consisting of a triad of Essence ( Father,
the creative powers ) , Life ( Mother, the preservative powers ) , and
Intelligence ( Son, the regenerative powers ) , but all in their entirety
are emanations from the Unknown Absolute Deity. The Orphic
teachings in their purity are identical with the teachings of the Wis
dom-Religion, the parent " Secret Doctrine " underlying all historical
religious systems, and they can be understood only with the help of
4.
Plutarch, D e Daed., Frag. IX, i , 754.
5 . Clemens Alexandrinus, Stromata,
6. Clementine Recognitions, x, 30.
v,
4.
322
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
the keys given by the Theosophical Leaders. For further explanation
the student should consult H. P. Blavatsky's masterpiece, The Secret
Doctrine, upon which the following brief exposition is based.
2. 'I'm;; ABSOLUTE DEITY
The ultimate postulate of Orphism is well expressed by Thomas
Taylor as a belief
i n one First (or rather Causeless) Cause o f all things, whose nature is so im
mensely transcendent that it is even super-essential ( that is, beyond and above
the realm of existence) and that in consequence of this it cannot properly either
be named, or spoken o f, or conceived by opinion or be known or perceived by
any being.7
This immense principle is superior even to Being itself ; exempt from the whole
of things, of which it is nevertheless ineffably the source. 8
All things, says an Orphic verse, are contained in "the single power
and the s ingle might of the One Deity, whom no man sees." 9 So Maxi
mus Tyrius states :
There is one Deity, the King and Father of all, and many gods, sons of the
Deity, ruling together with him.
This the Greek says, the barbarian says, the
inhabitant of the continent and he who dwells near the sea, the wise and the
unwise.10
So also Aristotle :
Our ancestors and men of great antiquity have bequeathed to us a tradition,
involved in fable, that the first principles are gods and that the Deity includes
the whole of nature.11
The Absolute Deity is named by Orphism " The Thrice Unknown
Darkness " ( a term adopted from the Egyptians ) , and Chronos or
Unaging Time, Endless Duration. Since the Ineffable i s of neces
sity unknowable, Orphic speculation turns to the dual principles of
primordial spirit and matter, previous to the manifestation of which
Orpheus declares " the Boundless unweariedly revolved in a circle." 1 2
3 . AETHER, CHAOS, AN D PnANES
The two principles immediately posterior to " the Thrice Unknown
Darkness " are called in Orphic teaching Aether ( the Father, spirit ) ,
and Chaos ( the Mother, the \Vorld-stuff, primordial matter ) . Mani
fested life is itself the offspring of these two principles and is rep re7.
Thomas Taylor, Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, Ist ed. 1805, p. 26.
Taylor, Mystical Hymns of Orpheus.
10.
9.
8.
Thomas
Quoted by Lobeck, Aglaophamus, p. 479.
Maximus Tyrius, Dissertation on What God is A ccordini; to Plato.
1 1 . Aristotle,
12. Quoted by Proclus, On the Cra tyliis of Plato, p. 78.
.Metaphysics, xii, 8.
STUDIES
IN
323
ORPHISM
sented by the symbol of the silvery-white Mundane Egg, from which
leaps forth in gleam ing glory Phanes-Protogonos, the First Born ,
the first Logos or cosmogonic Eros, love divine which fashions the
world, male-female, the triple dragon-formed God with four eyes
gaz ing everywhere, and golden wings with which he travels in every
direction, knoYvn also as ::VIetis and Ericapaeus.
Phanes, the " Appear
er," as the name signifies, is the first of the five successive Cosm ic
Rulers, the Parent of the gods and the creator and ruler of the ideal
world, the prototype and ancestor of Zeus, the demiurge or creator and
ruler of the material world.
both mother and wife.
following quotations.
vVith Phanes, );i ght is associated, as
These Orphic teachings are outlin ed in the
The Clementin e Recog11itions declare :
It is Orpheus, indeed, who proclaims that Chaos first existe d , e ternal , uncreate,
neither darkness nor light, nor moist nor dry. nor hot nor cold, but all things inter
mingled ever in one u nforme d m ass ; and that at length, in the shape of a huge
egg, it brought forth and produ ced from itself a twofold form, wrought out in
the c ourse of immense cycles of time, m ale-fem ale , a form made concrete by the
adm ixture of opposites - the principle of all things, which arose from matter
and which coming forth, effected a separation of the four clements and made
heaven of the two elements which ar c first ( fire and air ) , and e arth of the other
two (water and earth ) : and from them he says that all things now are b or n and
produced by a mutual participation in them .i s
Proclus states that
The Egg was produced by Aether ancl Chaos, Aether fashioning it according
to limit, for it is the root of all ; and Chaos according to infinity, for i t h as no
bou nds.14
Furthermore, Lactantius tells us that Orpheus called the first born
Phanes, or " the Appearer, because while as yet there was nought
He first appeared and came forth from the Infinite. " 1 5
look upon Phanes except Holy Kight alone.
" None could
The others - all amazed
beheld the sudden light in space, such radiance shone forth from
Phanes. "
16
" This power Orpheus calls Phanes because upon its
appearance the whole un iverse shone forth by the light of fire - the
most glorious of the elements. "
17
And its names Orpheus heard in a prophetic vision and procl aimed them to
be l\1etis, Phanes, and Ericapaeus, which interpreted signi fy Forethought ( \Vill ) ,
1 3.
1 5.
Cle m e n tin e Rccog11 itions,
x,
Lactantius, fostit11/iones, I. 5.
dntm, p.
141.
1 7.
30.
14.
16.
Proclus, On the Timaeus of Plato, I , 1 38.
Orphic Verse, quoted by Hermeas, In Phae-
Clemens Alexandrinus, quoted by Loheck,
Aglaopl1 1mzus, p. 478.
324
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
Light, and Life ( the Light-giver) ; and he added that these three divine powers
. . . are but the single power and might of the one Deity, whom no man seesand by whose power all things come into being, both the immaterial principles
and the sun and moon and all the stars.18
URA N US AKD GAEA
As Phanes carries within the ideal germ of all things divine and
earthly with the help of his mother and wife Night, he generates the
ideal world, and from the upper part of the broken shell of the Mun
dane Egg he forms Uranus or Heaven, his Son, the second Logos or
the second of the successive Cosmic Rulers ; and from the lower part
of the broken shell Gaea or Earth, wife of Uranus. This is referred
to by Aristophanes in the following verses :
4.
There was Chaos at first, and Darkness and N ight, and Tartarus, vasty and
dismal ;
But the Earth was not there, nor the Sky nor the Air, till at length in the bosom
abysmal
Of Darkness an Egg, from the whirlwind conceived, was laid by the sable-plumed
N ight.
And out of that F:gg, as the seasons revolved, sprang Love,19 the entrancing, the
bright,
Love brilliant and bold with his pinions of gold, like a whirlwind, refulgent, an<l
sparkling,
Then all things commingling together in love, there arose the fair Earth and
the Sky
And the limitless Sea ; and the race of the gods, the Blessed, who never shall die.20
5. KRONOS AND RHEA
The offspring of Heaven and Earth were first, the three Fates or
Karmic Powers, the three Hecatoncheires, the monsters with a hun
dred hands, and the three Cyclopes, both of which groups represent
cosmic builders among the celestial hierarchies, who, because of a pre
mature revolt against their father Uranus were hurled into the lower
most depths of Tartarus. The twelve Titans, as a second progeny,
were then brought forth by Earth in secret for the purpose of aveng
ing their defeated brethren. The second revolt, that of the Titans,
proved successful. Uranus was dethroned, and after a short reign of
the Titan Ophion and his wife Eurynome, the daughter of Ocean, the
scepter passed to Kronos, the third of the successive cosmic rulers, and
18.
19.
Malela, iv, 31 ;
Cedrenus, i, 57, 84, quoted by Lobeck, Aglaophamus, pp. 479-480.
That is, Cosmogonic Eros or Phanes.
20.
Aristophanes, Birds, 693-703 (Rogers) . .
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
325
his wife Rhea, the Great Goddess, Mother of the Olympian Gods.
This part of the Orphic cosmogony is ref erred to by Apollonius Rho
dius in the following verses :
And lo, with his lyre upheld
In his left hand, Orpheus arose, and the fountain of song upwelled.
And he sang how in the beginning the Earth and the Heaven and the Sea
In the selfsame form were blended together in unity ;
And he sang of the goal of the course in the firmament fixed evermore
For the stars and the moon, and the printless paths of the j ourneying sun,
And how the mountains arose, how rivers that babbling run,
They and their nymphs were born, and whatso moveth on Earth ;
And he sang how Ophion at first, and Eurynome, Ocean's birth,
In lordship of all things sat on Olympus' snow-crowned height ;
And how Ophion must yield unto Kronos' hands and his might ;
And she unto Rhea, and into the Ocean's waves plunged they.
O'er the blessed Titan Gods these twain for a space held sway,
·while Zeus as yet was a child, while yet as a child he thought,
And dwelt in the Cave Dictaean, while yet the time was not
\Vhen the Earth-born Cyclops the thunderbolt's strength to his hands should give,
Even thunder and lightning ; by these doth Zeus his glory receive.
Low murmured the lyre and slept, and the voice divine was still.21
ZEDS
As Phanes, the first of the cosmic rulers, is the creator of the ideal
world and the ancestor of the gods, so Zeus, the fourth in the chain of
succession, the last power in the ideal world, is the creator of the
material world, the demiurge, and the Father both o f gods and men.
Consequently Orphic myth represents Zeus as having swallowed or
absorbed his great prototype, Phanes. Also, Zeus is said to have
dethroned his father, Kronos, from whose blood sprang into being
the race of giants, who in the early years of Zeus' reign instituted an
unsuccessful revolt against the n ewly-established power. The wife
of Zeus in Orphic mythology is Demeter-Kore, the great Earth-god
dess, as Mother and Maid, rather than Hera, the Queen of the Sky,
as in the common myth.
Modern scholars and commentators frequently confuse Phanes
and Zeus with each other as well as with the Absolute Deity of Or
phism ; but the following Orphic Hymns refer to Zeus, the demiurge,
rather than to Phanes, the first Logos, or Chronos, the " Thrice Un
known Darkness," the Absolute Deity. However, in this connexion
the following explanation of Thomas Taylor must not be overlooked :
6.
21.
Apollonius Rhodius, A rgonau tica, I, 494-5 12
(Way's Translation ) .
THE
326
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
According to this theology, each of the gods is i n all, and all are in each,
being ineffably united to each other and the highest Deity, because each being a
superessential unity their conjunction with each other is a union of unities.
And
hence it is by no means wonderful that each is celebrated as all.22
Therefore the various goddesses are often represented as mother,
wife, and sister of the same god, and sometimes even as his daughter.
Thus an Orphic verse declares : " The Goddess who was Rhea, when
she bore Zeus became Demeter."
;..Jow rather turn the depths of thi?e own heart
Unto the place where l ight and knowledge dwell,
Take thou the vVord Divine to guide thy steps
And walking well in the straight and certain path,
Look to the One and Universal King One, self-begotten, and the Only One,
Of whom all things and we ourselves are sprung.
All things arc open to His piercing gaze,
While He Himself is still invisible.
Present in all his works .. though still unseen.
And other than the great King there is none.
The clouds for ever settle round His throne
And mortal eyeballs in mere mortal eyes
Are weak, to see Zens reigning over all.2·1
There is one Zeu s , one Sun, one Underworld ,
O n e Dionysus, one lone God i n all.23
Zeus was the first, Zeus of the bright thunderbolt shall be the last of things ;
Zeus is the head ; Zeus fills the midst ;
all things are framed of Zeus ;
Zeus is
the foundation both o f earth and of starry heaven ; Zeus is male ; 7.eus the divine
feminine ; Zeus is the breath of all things ; Zeu s the rushing of irresistible fire ;
Zeus the great fountain of the deep ; Zeus the sun and moon ; Zens is the king ;
Zeus the leader of all ;
for he of the bright thunderbolt, after hiding all within
him, brought them forth again from his sacre<l bosom to the gladsome day,
doing ever wondrously.24
For all things lie within the mighty frame o f Zeus.
His head and fair coun
tenance is to be beheld in the gleaming sky, adorned with the golden rays of the
glittering stars, as with beautiful hair ; and on either hand are the two golden
horns as of
a
bull, the East and the West, the paths of the heavenly gods ; an<l
his eyes are the sun and the shining moon ;
h i s royal ear that tells him all things
truly is the imperishable ether, wherethrough he hears and hath intelligence of all
things.
22.
Nor is there any voice or any cry or noise or rumor, which escapes the
Thomas Taylor,
Mystical H:i•lJms of Orpheus.
Justin :Martyr, Exh ortation,
xv.
24.
Orphic
23.
Hymn
Orphic Hymn, quoted hy
( Campbell's Translation ) .
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
ear of all-prevailing Zeus, the son of Kronos.
327
Thus immortal is his head and
faculty of thought, and his body all radiant, immeasurable, imperishable, unshak
able, of mighty limbs and all-subduing, is thus framed ;
the shoulders and the
chest and broad back of the god is the wide circumambient air, and he hath
wings, moreover, whereon he is wafted every way, and his holy abdomen is the
earth, mother of all things, and the lofty mountain-tops ;
middle is the swelling and sounding sea.
and the girdle of his
And the ground he treads are the
inward parts of earth firmly rooted beneath gloomy Tartarus.
Hiding all these
things within him, he brings them forth again into the gladsome light, doing ever
wondrously.2 5
Zeus is the great God who is all things that be The Pillar of the Earth and starry Sky,
The Depth of the great Deep ; the Sun, the Moon,
The Word which Makes, the all-compelling Love For all things lie within his formless frame.26
The following hymn by Cleanthes, though \\Titten by a Stoic, 1s
thoroughly in the Orphic spirit :
Greatest of the gods, God with many names,
God ever-ruling, and ruling all things !
Zeus, origin of K ature, governing the universe by law,
All hail !
For it is right for mortals to address thee ;
For we are thy offspring, and we alone o f all
That live and creep on earth have the power of imitative speech.
Therefore will I praise thee, and hymn forever thy power.
Thee the wide heaven, which surrounds the earth, obeys ;
Following where thou wilt, willingly obeying thy law.
Thou boldest at thy service, in thy mighty hands,
The two-edged, flaming, immortal thunderbolt,
Before whose flash all nature trembles.
Thou rulest in the common reason, which goes through all,
And appears mingled i n all things, great or small,
Which filling all nature, is king of all existences.
Nor without thee, 0 Deity, does anything happen in the world,
From the divine ethereal pole to the great ocean,
Except only the evil preferred by the senseless wicked.
But thou also art able to bring to order that which is chaotic,
Giving form to what is formless, and making the discordant friendly
So reducing all variety to unity, and making good out of evil.
Thus throughout nature is one great law
Which only the wicked seek to disobey Poor fools ! who long for happiness,
But will not see nor hear the divine commands.
25.
Orphic
Hymn
( Campbell's
Translation ) .
Lewis Morris ) .
26.
Orphic
Hymn
( Translation
by
THE
328
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
In frenzy blind they stray away from good,
By thirst of glory tempted, or sordid avarice,
Or pleasures sensual, and j oys that pall.
But do thou, 0 Zeus, all-bestowcr, cloud-compeller !
Ruler of thunder ! guard men from sad error.
Father ! dispel the clouds of the soul, and let us follow
The laws of thy great and j ust reign !
That we may be honored, let us honor thee again,
Chanting thy great deeds, as is proper for mortals,
For nothing can be better for gods or men
Than to adore with hymns the -Universal King.27
7.
ZAGREUS
The fi fth and last of the cosmic rulers in the Orphic theology is
Zagreus-Dionysus, the divine son, God-in-man, the separated deity,
and as such a power of the material world, intellectual and spiritual
light, son of Zeus and Demeter-Kore the Earth-goddess. Zagreus was
proclaimed to be the divine successor by Zeus himself, who announced :
" Hear me, ye gods, I place over you a king." The myth of Zagreus
formed the basis of the Orphic Mystery-drama and will be considered
later.
SUMMARY OF ORPHIC COSMOGONY
8.
It is thus plain that the Orphic Cosmogony postulates the Ineffable,
Unknowable, Absolute Deity, called Chronos or Unaging Time and
Endless Duration, as the ultimate fact ; but in the evolution of the
world, outlines seven emanations of the Absolute in the Ideal world,
viz : ( 1 -2 ) Aether ( spirit ) and Chaos ( matter ) , from which springs
( 3 ) the Mundane Egg ( Manifested Life ) , out of which leaps (4)
Phanes ( the first Logos ) , who in turn is succeeded by ( S) Uranus
and ( 6) Kronos ( the second and third Logoi ) , who are also succeeded
by ( 7 ) Zeus ( the demiurge ) , the last power of the Ideal World, who
starts again the sevenfold process of emanation by begetting Zagreus
Dionysus the God-in-man, the divine son. The importance of the
septenary key in Orphic theology is further shown by the following
verses :
When the Seventh Light comes, the All-powerful Father begins to dissolve
all things, but for the good there is a S eventh Light also ; for there is
origin of all things . 28
27.
a
Hymn of Cleanthes (Version given by James Freeman Clarke in his
Religions) .
28.
Orphic Verses, quoted by Eusebius in
Praep.
sevenfold
Ten Great
Ev. xiii, 12, 688.
45
STUDIES I N ORPHISM: by F. S. Darrow,
III.
A. M . , Ph. D.
(Harv.)
THE GREEK MYSTERIES
I
T HE Orphic teachings in regard to the fifth and last of
the Cosmic Rulers, Zagreus-Dionysos, were embodied
in the mystery-drama, which was witnessed by those
initiated into the sacred rites. Nevertheless, using the
keys given by
P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine
and Isis Unveiled, many details of this story of the Greek Mystic
Savior can be recovered by piecing together the statements made by
the later Platonists and their opponents, the early Christian Fathers.
First, a few quotations from H. P. Blavatsky in regard to the gen
eral character of the Mysteries.
H.
The Mysteries were observances, generally kept secret from the profane and
uninitiated, in which were taught by dramatic representation and other methods,
the origin of things, the nature of the human spirit, its relations to the body, and
the method of its purification and restoration to higher life.1
Elsewhere she adds : " Their obj ect was to re-establish the soul
in its primordial purity, or that state of perfection from which it had
fallen." 2
In the Mysteries were symbolized the pre-existent condition of the spirit and
soul, the lapse of the latter into earth-life and Hades, the miseries o f that life,
the purification o f the soul, and its restoration to divine bliss or reunion with
spirit. 3
And again :
It is well known that throughout antiquity besides the popular worship com
posed of the dead-letter forms and empty exoteric ceremonies every nation had
its secret cult, known to the world as the Mysteries. . . .
last surviving heirloom of archaic wisdom.
These . . . were the
During the public classes and general
teachings the lessons in cosmogony and theogony were delivered in allegorical
representation. . . .
Alone, the high initiates, the Epoptai , understood their lan
guage and meaning. 4
Fair-minded scholars have always admitted the nobility and purity
of the true and undegenerated forms of the Greek Mysteries.
Bishop Vv arburton declares :
1. Isis Unveiled, I, Before tb e Veil, p. xxxvii, s. v. Mysteries.
2. Cf. Plato, as
quoted by Warburton, Divine Legation of Moses, Vol. I, Bk. II, § iv, p. 210 ; ed. London, 1837 :
�Ko'll"os
a....
Twv TEAE'Twv tffr<P, Els T{A.os iha'Ya'YEtP Tas ifvxO.s eK.Zvo ri.¢' ov T�v 7rpW'TrJV l'Tl"otf,ffaPTo KafJoilov,
i. e. " It was the end and design of initiation to restore the soul to that state
from which it fell, as from its native seat of perfection." Also cf, Sallust, the Greek Neo
Platonist, O n the Gods and the World, i v : " It is the intention of all mystic ceremonies
to conj oin us with the world and the Gods."
3. Isis Unveiled, I, Before the Veil, p. xiv.
4. Lucifer, IV, pp. 226, 227.
ws
•
apx1)s,
46
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
The wisest and best of the Pagan world invariably hold that the Mysteries
were instituted pure and proposed the noblest ends by the worthiest means.5
The Reverend Dr. Edwin Hatch, also justly emphasizes the fact
that The main underlying conception of initiation was that there were elements
in human life from which the candidate must purify himself before he could be
fit to approach the Deity. . . .
Thus, the race of mankind was lifted on to a
higher plane when it came to be taught that only the pure in heart can see God.6
In fact, the whole aim of initiation was to procure for the pilgrim
soul true bliss by freeing it from the snares and impediments of a
purely earthly life. Therefore, the mystics were taught to worship
the One Ineffable Deity and to live a clean, pure life in accordance
with the spirit of brotherhood. Or in the words of an Orphic frag
ment :
Love light and not darkness.
cst.
Remember thy journey's end, whilst thou travel
For when souls [ a fter death ] return to the light [ i. e. earth-life] , they wear
as hideous scars upon their ethereal body all the sins of their former lives, whic!i
they must wash away by returning to earth.
The teachings of the Mysteries were rarely conveyed by the ex
position of doctrine and dogma, for the Greeks knew of no hard
and-fast creedal systems ; but by means of a drama, illustrative of the
soul's history, representing allegorically life, death, and rebirth, sym
bolically revealing the soul's divine parentage, its fall, and its final
restoration to Deity. The faith in and the authority of the Mysteries
was based not upon external forms but upon the Light within , by
means of which man was lifted out of his lower animal self, brought
into communion and association with the Divine vVithin and Above,
and purified by the leverage of aspiration. Plotinos says :
Knowledge has three degrees - opinion, science, and illumination.
The means
or instrument of the first is reception ; of the second, argumentative reasoning ;
o f the third intuition .
And it was the function of the Mysteries to develop the intuition.
A most interesting Orphic confession of Faith, dating from the
fi fth century B . c . has been preserved to us by Porphyry from the lost
Cretans of Euripides, in which the mystic declares :
In one pure stream
My days have run, the servant I.
5.
6.
The Divine Legation o f 111oses, Vol. I, Bk. ii, § iv, p. 244, ed. London, 1837.
Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church, Hibbert Lectures for
1888, ed. London, 1907, p. 285.
STUDIES
Initiate, o f Idaean
IN
ORPHISM
47
J o ve ; 7
\Vhere midnight Zagreus roves, I rove ;
I have endured his thunder-cry ;
8
Fulfilled his red and bleeding feasts ;
0
Held the Great Mother's mountain flame ;
I am set free ; a n d named b y name 11
10
A Bakchos o f the Mailed Priests.12
Robed in pure white I have borne me clean
From man's low birth and coffined clay,
And exiled from my lips alway
Touch of all meat where life hath been.13
The successive stages or grades in initiation are given by Theon
of Smyrna as : first, previous purification ; secondly, admission to
participation in the lesser mysteries or myesis ; thirdly, initiation into
the greater mysteries or epoptic revelation ; fourthly, investiture or
enthroning ; and fifthly, interior communion with the Divine. His
complete statement well deserves study. He says :
Again, philosophy may be called Initiation into the true sacred rites and the
instruction in the ge:mine Mysteries ;
for there are five parts of initiation, the
first of which is the preliminary purification.
Inasmuch as the �iysteries are not
communicated to all who wish to receive them certain persons are precluded by
the voice of the sacred Herald, such as those whose hands arc impure and whose
enunciation is unintelligible.
Then such as are not excluded must first be refined
by certain purifications ; and a fter purification, the instruction in the sacred rites
( myesis ) succeeds ; while the third part is denominated revelation or inspection
( epopteia ) .
The fourth, which is the end and design of the revelation is the
investiture or enthronement, the binding of the head and the fixing of the crowns,
whereby the initiated person is enabled to communicate to others the sacred rites
in which he has been instructed, whether after this he becomes a Torch-bearer
or a Hierophant of the Mysteries or sustains some other part of the sacerdotal
office.
The fi fth part, which is produced from all these is friendship and interior
communion w ith the Deity and the enjoyment of that happiness which arises from
intimate association with divine beings - or, according to Plato, an assimilation
to Divinity, as far as it is possible to mankind .14
7. Herc " Idean Jove " or Zeus, the All-Father, i s identified with Zagreus-Dionysos, the
Mystic God-Man, for in the words of St. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, v, ii, p. 688 :
" Euripides, the philosopher of the stage, has divined as in a riddle that the Father and the
Sons are One God."
8. i. e. persevered, as a neophyte, in the Divine Quest after Spiritual
Illumination.
9. i. e. partaken of the covenant of blood or the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
10. i. e. carried the mountain pine-torch at the celebration of the mystic marriage.
1 1 . i. e. from the treadmill cycle of ignorance. I have passed into the circle of Divine
Knowledge and am familiar with the laws of life and death.
12. i. e. an initiate follower
of the Mystic Savior, a member of the sacred guardian band of the Kouretai.
13. Murray's Translation.
14. i1Jath., I, p. 18 ( ed. Ba ill ) .
48
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
Proklos, also, bears similar testimony :
The perfective rite ( telete ) precedes in order of time the initiation ( myesis ) ,
and initiation the final apocalypse ( epopteia ) .15
It is thus evident that there were three principal stages or grades
in all mysteries : ( 1 ) preliminary purification ; ( 2 ) initiation ; and
( 3 ) revelation. To the perfective rite belonged the sacrament of
baptism and to the revelation the sacrament of the eucharist.
The ceremonial of the Mysteries began with a solemn proclama
tion made by the sacred Herald either in the form :
Let no one enter whose hands are not clean and whose tongue is not prudent.
or
He only may enter who is pure from all defilement and whose soul i s conscious
of no wrong and who has lived well and justly.16
This proclamation is reproduced by Aristophanes, as follows :
All evil thoughts and profane be still ;
far hence, far hence from our chorus
depart,
vVho knows not well what the mystics tell, or is not holy and pure of heart ;
\Vh o ne'er has the noble revelry learned.17
In connexion with the ancient mysteries there were two forms of
baptism, the common or popular form consisting of bathing in or
sprinkling with pure water ; and a second form, apparently peculiar
to the Orphic ritual.
In the common form those entering the sacred precinct purified
themselves by dipping their hands in holy water, drawn from a sacred
spring and were at the same time admonished to present themselves
with pure minds, without which mere external baptism was of no avail.
When the rite consisted in bathing it was usually performed in the sea.
Euripides thus refers to the usual rite, as performed in the fifth
century B. c. :
Pass ye, and cleanse with the pure spray-rain
Your bodies, or ever ye enter the fane.
Set a watch on the door of your lips ; be there heani
:Nothing but good in the secret word
That ye murmur to them whose hearts be stirred
To seek to the shrine, that they seek not in vain.18
15.
16.
On the Theology of Plato, IV. p. 220.
17. Frogs, 354-356, Rogers' Translation.
Origen, Contra Celsum, T I T , 59.
18.
Ion, 96- 101.
STUDIES
IN
49
ORPHISM
And in the Greek Anthology we read :
Come, pure in heart, and touch the lustral wave ;
One drop sufficeth for the sinless mortal ;
All else, e'en ocean's billows can not lave.19
With hallowed hands, with mind and tongue
Both pure and true,
Come, enter in, not cleansed by baths
But washed white
In spirit ;
for from wickedness
The ocean wide
With all its floods can not the stain
Wash clean away.20
The exact parallelism between these verses of ancient Greece and
the following verse from the Epistle to the Hebrews is at once obvious :
Let us draw near with a true heart, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil
conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.21
This is, in fact, to all intents and purposes a paraphrase of the
words of Euripides, written in the fifth century B. c. Therefore
Pagan baptism was explained by Justin Martyr as an anticipatory
imitation of the true baptism, that the false votaries might have a
pretended purification by water.22
The peculiar Orphic form of baptism is no longer practised in
Christian ceremonial. It consisted in washing from the face of the
neophyte a mixture of clay and bran with which it had been previously
smeared. The smearing referred to the disguise adopted by the Titans
in the Orphic Myth preparatory to their murder of Zagreus-Dionysos,
the God-man or Mystic Savior, and typified the disguise and deceit
associated with man's lower nature, from which the candidate for
initiation must be cleansed. Therefore the significance of this rite,
which has been often misunderstood, lay not in the smearing of the
face but in the later cleansing of the neophyte, comparable to the
reduction of the bodies of the Titans to ashes by the lightning of
Zeus, subsequent to the Passion of Zagreus.
Baptism was not infrequently followed by a ceremonial sacrifi c e
of salvation, the so-called Soteiria, which was symbolical of spiritual
regeneration. Then followed the admission to participation in the
lesser mysteries or myesis ; while the third stage, that of revelation,
19.
Sandys' Tranlation.
20. From the Greek Anthology.
22. First Apology, chapter lxii.
21.
Hebrews,
x,
22
50
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
seems to have culminated in the sacrament of the eucharist, which
typified the direct union of humanity with D ivinity, and which as in
the case of the myesis was preceded by an allegorical ceremony signi
fying the renunciation of the desires of the lower nature.
The mystic Pagan eucharist of the fifth century B. c . is thus de
scribed by Euripides, who says, in speaking of Dionysos as the Mystic
Savior :
In the God's high banquet, when
Gleams the grape-blood, flashed to heaven 23
To all that liveth His wine he giveth,
Griefless, immaculate. 2�
Yea, being God, the blood of Him is set
Before the Gods in sacrifice, that we
For His sake may be blest.25
Then in us verily dwells
The God Himself, and speaks the things to be, 26
The Lord of Many Voices,
Him of mortal mother born,
Him in whom man's heart rej oices,
First in Heaven's sovereignty.27
If further proof of the existence of the eucharist in the Mysteries
is desired, it is given in the explicit statements of the early Christian
Fathers, in Justin Martyr (First Apology, c. LVI ) and in Tertullian
(De Praes. Haeret., c. XI ) , for instance.
In speaking of the eucharist as celebrated in the pre-Christian
Mysteries, H. P. Blavatsky writes :
Cicero mentions it in his works and wonders at the strangeness of the rites.
There had been an esoteric meaning attached to it from the first establishment
of the Mysteries and the Eucharistia is one of the oldest rites of antiquity.
the Hierophants it had nearly the same significance as with the Christians.
With
Deme
ter was bread and Bacchus was wine; the former meaning regeneration of life
from the seed, and the latter - the grape - the emblem of wisdom and know
ledge ; the accumulation of the spirit of things and the fermentation and subse
quent strength of that esoteric knowledge being justly symbolized by wine.28
In the Greek Mysteries there were not only two forms of baptism,
the common and the Orphic, but also two forms of the eucharist as
well. Orphic ritual seems to have forbidden the use of wine and to
have substituted a kind of mead made of honey and milk. There
fore Euripides sings of the epiphany of Dionysos :
vv.
23. Bacchae, vv. 383, 384 ( Murray's Translation) .
24. Ibid., vv. 421, 422.
25. Ibid.,
284, 285.
26. Ibid., vv. 300, 301.
27. Ibid., vv. 376-380.
28. Isis Unveiled, II, 44.
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
51
Then streams the earth with milk, yea streams
With wine, and honey of the bee.29
And again in speaking of the Maenads upon Mount Kithaeron :
If any lip s
Sought whiter draughts, with dipping finger-tips
They pressed the sod, and gushing from the ground
Came springs of milk and reed-wands ivy-crowned
Ran with sweet honey.30
On the Orphic Tablets dating from the fourth century B. c . , the
Soul of the Initiate in the after-world says " A Kid I have fallen into
milk," 31 an expression which probably refers to the Orphic Commu
nion. It is noteworthy in this connexion that in the rites of the
primitive Christian church the neophyte drank not only of wine but
also of a cup of milk and honey so that those " new-born in Christ "
tasted of the food of babes as is declared by Tertullian :
When we are taken up ( as new-born children ) we taste first of all of a mix
ture of milk and honey.32
Likewise, upon one of " the Magic Papyri " the worshiper is thus
mystically advised :
Take honey with milk, drink of it be fore sunrise, and there shall be within thy
heart something divine. ss
The symbolism of the two elements of this Orphic Communion is
given by Porphyry and Macrobius. The honey typified . both purifica
tion and preservation, both life and death, and as it was used by the
ancients in embalming, it represented eternal bliss as well. There
fore we read upon a sepulchral inscription of the first century B. c. :
Here lies Boethos, Muse-bedewed, undying
Joy hath he of sweet sleep in honey lying.34
The milk symbolized both reincarnation upon earth and spiritual
regeneration. Sallust, the Greek Neoplatonist, in speaking of the five
species of fables, says :
We employ the nutriment of milk, as i f passing by this means into a state of
regeneration.85
29. Bacchae, vv. 146, 147 (Murray) .
30. Ibid., vv. 708-710.
31. Campagno Tablet
(a) vide Critical Appendix on the Orphic Tablets, by Professor Gilbert Murray, in Miss
Harrison's Prolegomena to the Study of Greek R eligion, 2d. ed. 1908, p. 667.
32.
De
Corona Militis, III.
33. Berliner Zauber-papyrus, in Abh, d. Berl. Akad. 1865, p. 120, 1. 20.
34. 0. Benndorf, Grabschrift von Telm essos in Festschrift fur Th. Gomperz, p. 404 (Translation given by Miss Harrison) .
35. On the Gods and the World, c. IV.
THE
52
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
H. P. Blavatsky has stated : " the Mysteries are as old as the
world." 86
And Euripides speaks of
Heaven's high Mysteries, that heritage sublime
Our sires have left us, Wisdom old as time.87
Dr. Hatch also makes the same declaration :
The Mysteries were probably the survival of the oldest religion of the Greek
races and of the races which preceded them. They were the worship not of the
Gods of the sky - but of the Gods of the earth and the Underworld, the Gods
of the productive forces of nature and of death.88
The Mystery-drama, as a part of the " Secret Doctrine " handed
down throughout the ages, is independent of time and place. Every
where it will be found to be identical in spirit, although divergent in
letter and form. It contains, at least, seven well-marked symbolical
moments or salient features. These are ( 1 ) the first Mystic Marriage,
the marriage of the Divine All-Father with the mighty Earth-Mother ;
( 2 ) the first birth of the Divine Son, as the mortal God-Man ; ( 3 ) the
Agony or Passion of the mortal, mystic Savior ; ( 4 ) the second
Mystic Marriage of the Divine All-Father with the Earth Goddess in
the guise of a mortal virgin ; ( 5 ) the conquering of death or the
Descent to and Emergence from Hades of the Divine Son ; ( 6) his
second Birth as the risen immortal Mystic Savior ; and lastly ( 7) his
triumphant Re-ascent to his Heavenly Homeland.
II
Of these seven symbolical moments the emphasis and symbolism
of the fourth, the second Mystic Marriage, varies somewhat in the
different forms of the national myths ; but the elements are invari
ably the same : while the subject of the Mystery-drama is always the
story of the Agony and the Passion of the Divine in man followed by
Its ultimate triumph. The Mystery-teachings universally held out the
hope of Divine help in this life, the promise of regeneration and atone
ment for past wrong-doing, and the hope of immortality in the here
after, and all inculcated the belief in the One Life from which all
separate individual lives have sprung into being.
In this connexion the following points should be noted : First, the
Mystery-God is both mortal and immortal : he suffers a Passion,
36.
38.
Isis Unveiled, Vol. II, p. 98.
37.
Bacchae,
vv.
200, 201 ( Murray) .
1907, pp. 283, 284.
Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages Upon the Christian Church, ed.
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
53
is torn to pieces, dies, and comes to life again. Therefore, he brings
the hope of immortality. Secondly, the worshiper becomes one with
the Mystery-God and thereby immortal. So in the Orphic Confession,
already quoted, the worshiper of Zagreus becomes a Bakchos ; and
the pure soul in the Egyptian underworld becomes Osiris. Thirdly,
the worship of the Mystery-God is ascetic, that is, the true worshiper
renounces his lower nature. The key-note is : " God thou art and
unto God thou shalt return." Whether Eleusinian, Orphic, common
Bakchic, Samothracian, Phrygian, Phoenician, or Egyptian, the Mys
teries all came from one common source, as is shown by the identity
of the teaching underlying the diversity of the mythical setting. This
ultimate identity was clearly recognized in antiquity, as may be seen
from the following epigram of the poet, Ausonius :
Ogygia
( i.
e. Greece) calls me Bakchos ;
Egypt thinks me Osiri s ;
The Mysians name me Phanax ;
The Hindus consider me Dionysos ;
The Roman Mysteries call me Liber ;
The Arabian race, Adonis.89
Ancient Mysteries were of two chief varieties : CIVIC, that is,
administered by the state ; and private, controlled and managed by
individuals. Of the civic Greek Mysteries those of Athens, celebrated
at Eleusis and according to tradition founded as early as 1800 B. c.,
were the most famous. The Eleusinian Mysteries continued to be
celebrated for more than five hundred years after Greece became
a Roman province, that is until 396 A . D., when the Telesterion or
temple of the Mysteries was destroyed by the soldiers of Alaric the
Goth at the instigation of fanatical Christian monks. The Eleusinian
Divinities were Demeter Thesmophoros, the Earth-Mother, as Goddess
of Law and Order ; Persephone-Kore, the Divine Maid ; and Iakchos,
the Divine Son.
Judging from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the Sacred Drama
was originally based merely on the myth of Persephone, but probably
in the sixth century B. c., under the influence of Epimenides and of
Onomakritos the editor of the Orphic Poems, a scholar prominent in
the court of Peisistratos ( 564-527 B . c. ) at Athens, the Orphic Mys
tery-myth of Zagreus-Dionysos was incorporated into the Eleusinian
ritual, and the Eleusinian Divinity, Iakchos, the son of Demeter, was
39.
Epigram,
xxx.
54
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
identified with the Orphic God-Man. The Lesser Mysteries of the
Eleusinia were celebrated every spring at Agrae, a suburb of ancient
Athens, in the neighborhood of the Panathenaic stadium. These
seem to have consisted of the dramatization of the Carrying-off of
Persephone and of the Murder of Zagreus : in which case the Greater
Mysteries,which were celebrated at the Telesterion or temple of the
Mysteries at Eleusis, represented the Return of Persephone from
Hades and the Rebirth of Dionysos.
Speaking of the Eleusinian Mysteries Sophokles says :
Ah ! would I were there
By the torch-lit shore,
Where awful powers still watch,
O'er solemn rites for men of mortal race ;
Whose golden key is set upon the lips
Of priests, Eumolpidae, who tend the shrine.'0
And Krinagoras in the Greek Anthology advises :
Go thou to Attica ;
Fail not to see those great nights of Demeter,
Mystical, holy !
There thou shalt win thee a mind that is care-free
Even while living,
And when thou j oinest the major assembly
Light shall thy heart be.41
Although in ancient times there were many Mysteries celebrated
in honor of Demeter, Kore-Persephone, Hermes, lasion, Ino, Acher
mos, Agraulos, Hekate, and other Divinities, the chief myths which
were utilized as versions of the Mystery-story were ( 1 ) those of
Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysos ; ( 2 ) of Zeus, Rhea-Kybele, the
Great Mother of the Gods and Attis ; and ( 3 ) of Aphrodite and
Adonis. Of all these the pure and unadulterated Orphic Mysteries
were the noblest and the most important. Proklos states justly that
All Greek theology is derived from the Orphic Mystagogy [that is, from the
Orphic Mystery-teaching] !2
And Augustine declares :
The Kingdom of the Impious [that is, the Pagan Graeco-Roman World] is
40.
Oedipus at Co /onus, vv. 1044-1053.
4 1 . Allinson's Translation.
42. Quoted by Lobeck, Aglaophamus, 1839, Vol. I. p. 723.
STUDIES
IN
55
ORPHISM
wont to set Orpheus as head over the rites that have to do with the world
hereafter. 43
The Orphic Mystery-Gods are three in number : Zeus, the Divine
All-Father ; Demeter-Persephone, the Earth-Goddess, as both Mother
and Maid ; Zagreus-Dionysos, the Divine Son or God-Man. In later
Greek times many foreign mystery-myths were introduced into Greek
lands ; namely, the myth of Rhea-Kybele from Phrygia ; that of Ado
nis from Phoenicia ; that of Mithra from Persia ; and the myths of
Isis, Osiris, and Horus, from Egypt.
The historical Mysteries of Greece were derived from Egypt if
we may trust the statement of Diodorus Siculus, who says that the
whole mythology of the Greek Hades was adopted from that of Egypt
and that the Mysteries of Osiris are the same as those of Dionysos,
and those of Isis the same as those of Demeter. 44
Plutarch makes the same statement in his treatise on Isis and
Osiris, and adds that Isis and Osiris are not merely local Gods of
Egypt but universal divinities worshiped under one name or another
by all mankind. Herodotos says :
I can by no means allow that it is by mere coincidence that the Bakchic cere
monies in Greece are so nearly the same as the Egyptian. 4�
Elsewhere he adds :
The rites called Orphic and Bakchic are in reality Egyptian and Pythagorean.46
And the case is made all the stronger by the further statements
repeated by several ancient authors that not only Orpheus but Pytha
goras and Plato as well were initiated by the Egyptian hierophants.
Therefore it can hardly be doubted that the Orphic Mystery-God
Zagreus-Dionysos is identical with Osiris.
On the other hand, the statement of Diodorus Siculus 47 to the
effect that " all the Mysteries which had their origin in Dionysos are
called Orphic " needs to be qualifi e d. The true Orphic teachings con
stituted " a system of the purest morality," and were quite distinct
from the common unreformed Bakchic rites, 48 by whose votaries,
apparently, Orpheus himself had been put to death.49 Only those rites
celebrated in honor of Zagreus-Dionysos, as reformed by Orpheus,
the religious teacher, deserve the name Orphic. In these not only
43. D e Civitate Dei, xviii, 14.
48.
44. I, 96.
45.
Il, 49.
Vide, H. P Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, Vol. II, p. 129.
49.
46. II, 8 1 .
47. III,
65.
Vide, Studies in Orphism,
I. Mythical and Historical Orpheus, Theosophical Path, April, 1912
56
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
were all forms of license strictly forbidden but in the eucharist milk
and honey took the place of wine.
Consecration, perfect purity issuing in Divinity is - the keynote of Orphic
faith, the goal of Orphic ritual.50
The best and the noblest in all Greek religion and philosophy is
to be found in the " Golden Chain of Succession," extending from
Orpheus through Pythagoras and Plato down to Neo-Platonism, the
last blossom on the tree of the Dionysiac faith. The genuine followers
of Orpheus carefully distinguish between merely formal and true
initiation, as is shown by their proverb : " Many are the wand-bearers
[ i. e., those who carry the mystic thyrsos ] but few the Bakchoi," i. e.,
the pure or true Initiates. In one of the Chaldaean Oracles we read :
Things Divine cannot be realized by those whose intellectual eye is directed
to the body.
But only those can succeed in possessing them, who, stript of their
garments, hasten to the summit.
The rise of the Orphic worship of Dionysos is the most important
fact in the history of Greek religion, and marks a great spiritual
reawakening. Its three great ideas are ( 1 ) a belief in the essential
Divinity of humanity and the complete immortality or eternity of the
soul, its pre-existence and its post-existence ; ( 2 ) the necessity for
individual responsibility and righteousness ; and ( 3 ) the regeneration
or redemption of man's lower nature by his own higher Self.
Orphism was the last word of Greek religion, and its ritual was but the revival
of ancient practices with a new significance.n
It is fitting to close with the words of Thomas Taylor, the Platon
ist, who of all modern scholars has most justly appreciated the spirit
of the Greek Mysteries :
As to the philosophy, by whose assistance the Mysteries were developed, it is
coeval with the universe itself ; and, however its continuity may be broken by
opposing systems, it will make its appearance at different periods of time, as long
as the sun himself shall continue to illuminate the world.
It has, indeed, and may
hereafter be violently assailed by delusive opinions ; but the opposition will be
just as imbecile as that o f the waves o f the sea against a temple built on a rock,
which majestically pours them back,
Broken and vanquished, foaming to the main.52
However it may be involved in oblivion in barbarous and derided in impious
ages, it will again flourish - through all the infinite revolutions of time.58
50. Miss Harrison, Prolegomena, 2d ed. p. 477.
51. Ibid., p. xii.
52. Preface to
Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, 1st ed. Amsterdam ( London), 1790 ; 2d ed. London, 1816.
53. Preface to Miscellanies iti Prose and Verse, 1st ed. London, 1805 ; 2d ed. London, 1820.
163
STUDIES IN ORPHISM: by F. S. Darrow, A.
IV.
1.
M., Ph.D. (Harv.)
THE MYTH OF ZAGREUS-DIONYSOS
T H E FIRST MYSTIC MARRIAGE OF THE DIVINE ALL-FATHER WITH
THE MIGHTY EARTH-MOTHER AND THE FIRST BIRTH OF T H E DIVINE
SoN AS ZAGREUS.
AS
the Orphic teachings revealed the story of cosmic
evolution or the formation of the Macrocosm by means
of an allegory, centered around seven mythological
figures, Orphism in a similar fashion expounded its
teachings in regard to the Microcosm or the Little
World ( of which man is the center ) , by means of a mythical narrative
related of Zagreus-Dionysos, the savior of Greek mythology, and it
was this story which supplied the subject-matter of the Dionysiac
Greek Mystery-drama.
In the Orphic Theogony the wift of Zeus, the Demiurge, the divine
All-Father, is not Hera the Homeric Queen of Heaven, but the mighty
Earth-Goddess in her twofold aspect as Demeter, the Divine l\.fother,
and Kore, the Divine Maid, appearing both as the immortal goddess
Persephone the Virgin Queen of the Dead, and as the mortal maid
Semele, later immortalized as Thyone, the inspired, the mother of the
mystic savior.
Not only are Demeter, Persephone, and Semele-1'hyone in essence
one, the Earth-Goddess in her three aspects as wife, mother, and
daughter, but Zagreus-Iakchos, the divine Son, child of Zeus in the
form of a dragon and of Demeter-Kore, is from one point of view at
least identical with Zeus the Demiurge, and Phanes, the first of the
Macrocosmic powers, the germ of manifested life. These shifts in
personality with an identity of divine essence are common in myth
ology. Though the personages differ the Deity impersonated is one,
for the various persons represent, as it were, merely different stages
or aspects of one and the same life.
Zagreus, both the holy Babe and the mighty horned Hunter, the
mystic savior of Orphism, is first mentioned in extant Greek literature
in a verse, preserved from the lost Epic, the Alkmaeonis, which runs
as follows :
Holy Earth and Zagreus, greatest of all the Gods.
As a word, Zagreus seems to have at least three distinct meanings:
164
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
first, the mighty Hunter, that is, the pilgrim Soul ; secondly, He that
takes many captives, that is, the Lord of the Dead ; and thirdly, the
restorer to life and strength, or the king of the reborn.
Zagreus from the moment of his birth is his father's favored son,
proclaimed as successor of Zeus, who, placing the symbols of power,
the scepter of Heaven and a golden apple, in the child's hands, declared
to the assembled Gods :
Hear ye, 0 Gods, over you I place a King.1
This declaration aroused the jealous wrath of Hera who forthwith
plotted the speedy destruction of Zagreus.
2.
Tin� A GONY OR PASSION
oF ZAGREUS
Therefore, in the pursuit of her murderous design against the holy
Babe she released from the depths of Tartaros the pent-up fury of the
dethroned earth-born Titans, upon the condition that they would be
the ministers of her vengeance and slay Zagreus. To this they agreed.
The Orphic fragments mention fourteen different Titans, seven male
and seven female,2 which are referred to by Proklos as the " divine
Titanic hebdomads. " Some scholars under the lead of Faber and his
" seven Arkite Titans," 3 have attempted to distinguish between seven
good Titans and an indeterminate number of evil-minded ones, the
murderers of Zagreus, but such a distinction does not seem justified
in Orphic theogony, which apparently was content with representing
the Titanic nature as dual, composed of divine and earthly elements,
without distinguishing between two separate classes. The number
seven is evidently part and parcel of the Orphic number-symbology
and has an obvious connexion with that portion of the myth which tells
of the dismemberment of the body of Zagreus!
Hera bided her time and carried out her plot during the temporary
absence of Zeus. Apollo and the Curetes, the appointed guardians of
the infancy of Zagreus, were enticed away from their charge by her
wiles. Whereupon, the Titans with their naturally black faces arti
ficially whitened by means of a mixture of chalk and clay, stealthily
approached the Liknon, or cradle-basket, wherein the holy Babe lay
surrounded by the symbols of power which had been entrusted to him
1. Proklos In Crat}'lum, p. 59.
2. Proklos In Timaeum, V. p. 295.
3. Faber,
George Stanley: A Dissertation on the Mysteries of the Cabiri, 2 vols., Oxford, 1803.
4. Proklos In Timaeum, III, p. 184.
STUDIES
IN
165
ORPHISM
by his fond father. Each Titan carried a false toy with which to
beguile the child away from the protection of the nursery. One car
ried the Thyrsos or sacred Bacchic wand, another a top, and a third
a mirror. Zagreus relinquished his symbols of power and reached
for these proffered toys. His fancy was especially captivated by the
mirror, and while he was engaged in viewing his own image in it he
was suddenly surprised by the assassins. In vain he tried to escape
from their fearful grasp by constantly changing his shape, until finally
in the form of a bull he was overcome with dismay at the magic
bellowings caused by Hera. Thereupon his body was torn into seven
or fourteen pieces, that is, twice seven as in the Egyptian mystery-myth
of Osiris. The dismembered limbs were first boiled and afterwards
roasted by the Titans who then began to devour the flesh ; but Zeus
returned, and upon discovering their wickedness blasted them with his
thunderbolt, and from their ashes have sprung into being the human
race. Thus the Orphic poet sings :
The Earth-born [Titans] who showered down from heaven
Their blood, the grievous germ of birth [ that is, of incarnation in the material
world ] , from which sprang
The race of mortals, who ceaselessly inhabit the boundless earth.5
And again :
0 mighty Titans, who from heav'n and earth
Derive your noble and illustrious birth,
Our fathers' sires, in Tartaros profound
Who dwell, deep merg'd beneath the solid ground
Fountains and principles from whom began
Th' afflicted, hapless race of man.a
Athena and Apollo were both present with Zeus at the time of the
destruction of the Titans, and the goddess of \Visdom discovering that
the heart of Zagreus was still palpitating, forthwith handed it to her
father, as thus described by the great Platonist Proklos in his Hymn
to Athena :
Once by thy care, as sacred poets sing,
The heart of Bakchos, swiftly-slaughtered king,
Was saved in aether, when, with fury fir'd
The Titans fell, against his life conspired :
And with relentless rage and thirst for gore,
Their hands his members into fragments tore :
5.
Orphic Argonautika, 12.
6.
Orphic Hymns, xxxvii, Taylor's
Translation.
166
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
But ever watchful o f thy father's will,
Thy pow'r preserv'd him from succeeding ill,
Till from the secret counsels of his sire,
And born from Semele through heavenly fire,
Great Dionysos to the world at length
Again appeared with renovated strength.7
In accordance with the commands of Zeus, Apollo gathered the
scattered fragments of the limbs of Zagreus and placed them in a coffin
near the Omphalos or sacred conical stone at Delphi, marking, accord
ing to Greek myth, the navel of the earth. In historic times, if we
may trust the account given in the Chronicles of the Byzantine his
torian Malalas - an account which seems to be derived from the lost
Atthis of Philochoros, (3d century B. c. ) , the coffin was thus inscribed :
" Here lieth dead, the body of Dionysos, the Son of Semele. " 8 At fi r st
the actual wording of the epitaph may seem strange, as we might expect
that it would have read : " Here lieth dead, the body of Zagrcus, the
Son of Demeter. " Perhaps the explanation is to be found in the fact
that the Semele myth was exoteric property and commonly current,
while the story of Zagreus was familiar only to the Orphic Mystics.
The close connexion of Dionysos, the spiritual night-sun, with Apollo,
the day-sun, noted before, is also shown by the circumstance that the
Delphic shrine was occupied each year between Christmas and Easter
not by Apollo, who then withdrew to the distant land of the Hyper
boreans, but by Dionysos.
3. T H E SECOND MYSTIC MARRIAGE OF THE DIVINE ALL-FATHER
WITH THE EARTH-GODDESS IN THE GUISE OF THE MORTAL VIRGIN
SEMELE ; AND THE SECOND BIRTH OF THE DIVINE SoN,
THE Gon-MAN, AS DroNYsos.
"A Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son."
The common exoteric form of the Dionysiac Myth regularly repre
sents the god as the son of Zeus by the mortal maid Semele, the daugh
ter of Kadmus, the Man from the East, the Founder of Thebes, the
mystic city of the seven gates. The mystery-key to this is given in
the following fragment of Apollodoros :
There is also a legend which says that Dionysos was born of Zeus and Earth :
from Earth called Themele
because all things are so to speak placed in it as
Taylor's Translation.
8. Malalas, Chron., II, p. 45 ed. Bonn. Philochoros Frag. xxii.
Which word is here regarded as a variant form of the Greek word 8€µ.df>..a, meaning that
which is first laid or placed - the foundation.
7.
9.
9
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
167
a foundation, which by changing one letter [the theta] and by substituting there
for an S, the poets call Semele.10
Therefore, Semele is merely one of the many variant forms
assumed by the Earth-goddess, as mother and maid. She is none
other than Demeter-Kore in the guise of a mortal woman, to whom
is entrusted the still beating heart of Zagreus. Hera, upon perceiving
that she had failed to destroy Zagreus by having him dismembered,
transformed herself likewise into a mortal woman, into Beroe the aged
nurse, who, when the newly-formed life arising from the beating heart
of the old was in its seventh month ( again the Orphic septenary ) , suc
ceeded in poisoning the mind of Semele with suspicion by insinuating
that the lover, who had given this life to her keeping, was not the
mighty King of Heaven but some human impostor bent on deceiving
a poor maid. Thereupon, Semele at the next visit of Zeus in human
form, after exacting from him a promise to grant whatever she might
ask, requested him, if he was really the father of gods and men,
to appear to her in his full majesty. Zeus, knowing that mere human
ity may not look upon unveiled Divinity and live, tried to evade the
granting of this request, but bound by his spoken pledge, he was forced
at length to yield to the importunities of Semele and to appear in his
true form amid thunder and lightning. As such a vision was unendur
able to mortality, Semele, the human form of Kore, was destroyed,
but the holy Babe was for a second time saved from destruction,
inasmuch as Zeus broke his own body and sewed the child up in his
own thigh, whence, at the expiration of the full time of nine months,
the life that formerly was Zagreus, was reborn as Dionysos, the risen
savior, " He of the Two Portals," " The Thrice Begotten."
" Unto us
child is born) unto us a Son is given ! "
From the author of the Philosophoumena) or Refutation of all
Heresies, presumably the Patristic writer, Hippolytos, we learn that the
revelation of the sacred birth of the Mystic Savior formed the crown
ing act of the highest Epoptic or apocalyptic rites of the Eleusinian
Mysteries, for he says, while expounding the doctrines of the Christian
Gnostics, known as N aasenes :
a
The Athenians when they initiate at the Eleusinian Mysteries exhibit to the
Epoptae [the highest mystics ] the mighty and marvelous and most complete
apocalyptic !'llYstery, an ear of corn reaped in silence.
10.
Apollodoros, Frag. xxiv or xxix, apud Joan. Lyd.
Now, this ear of corn the
Cf. also Hesychios sub voce Semele.
168
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
Athenians believe represents the great and perfect Light, which proceeds from
That which is formless, as the Hierophant, himself . . . by night at Eleusis under
the light of a bright flame enacting the great and unutterable mysteries, cries out
in a loud voice : " Holy Brimo hath borne a consecrated Son, Brimos," which
is to say, the mighty Goddess hath borne a m ighty child ; and holy, holy is the
birth that is spiritual, that is heavenly, that is from above, and mighty is he that
is so born.11
That the birth thus referred to is the second birth as Dionysos the
risen savior, and not the first birth as Zagreus, is shown by the fact
that it was represented as a part of the highest epoptic rites, and we
learn from Clement of Alexandria that Brimo was a title of the Earth
Goddess.12 Further light as to her identity with Demeter-Kore-Per
sephone-Semele is to be gained from the following verses of Apollonios
Rhodios, who thus describes a spell woven by the witch-princess
Medeia :
When seven times she had bathed her in waters unresting that glide,
And seven times upon Brimo, the Nursing Mother had cried Night-wandering Brimo, the Underworld Goddess, the Queen of the Dcad.13
Dionysos, the reborn God-Man, has his birthday at Easter, at the
joyful time of the resurrection of the Earth in " his own holy Spring."
Therefore, a paean, recently discovered at Delphi, thus refers to the
God :
Evoe, B akchos, hail, Paean [ Healer] hail !
Whom in sacred Thebes, th' mother fair,
She, Thyone [that is, Semele ] , once to Zeus did bear
All the stars danced for joy.
Mirth
Of mortals hailed thee, Bakchos, at thy birth.14
Very suggestive are the following references to the talc of Diony
sos, " the All-Father's mystic Son," from that wonderful mystery-play
of Euripides' old age, The Bacchae:
Dionyse is God, no God more true nor higher.16
Appear, appear, whatso thy shape or name
0 �fountain Bull, Snake of the Hundred Heads,
Lion of the Burning Flame !
0 God, Beast, Mystery, come ! 17
1 1 . Philosophoumena, V, 3.
12. E%hort. II.
1 3. A rgonautika, III, 860-862, Way's
Translation.
14. Miss Harrison's T ranslation based on the text as established by Dr. H.
Weil.
15. V. 366, Murray's Translation.
16. V. 777, Ibid.
17. VV. 1017-1020, Ibid.
STUDIES
IN
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169
Oh, bring the j oy-bestower,
God-seed of God, the Sower.18
Whom erst in anguish lying
For an unborn life's desire
As a dead thing in the Thunder
His moth er cast to earth l
For her heart was dying, dying,
In the white heat of the fire :
Till Zeus, the Lord of Wonder
Devised new lairs of birth :
Yea, his own flesh tore to hide him,
And with
clasps of bitter gold
Did a secret Son enfold.18
That same
Babe that was blasted by the lightning flame \'Vas
re-conceived, born perfect from the thigh
Of Zeus, and now is God ! 1Q
Iakchos, Bromios, Lord, God of God Born !
20
God's true Son, in fulness God,
Most fearful, yet to man most soft of mind.21
All hail, God of the Voice,
Manifest ever more !
Dionysos, Child of the Highest !
22
Thou Mystery, we hail thee by thy name !
23
The Babe of God, the Mystery !
When from out the fire immortal
To himself his God did take him,
To his own flesh, and bespake him :
" Enter now life's second portal,
Motherless Mystery : lo I brake
Mine own body for thy sake,
Thou of the Twofold
Door , and seal thee
Mine, 0 Bromios," - thus he spake "And to thy land reveal thee."
4.
24
THE TRIUMPH OF DIONYSOS
Hera, nothing daunted by the birth of Dionysos from the thigh
of Zeus, continued to harass the god, who was first placed under the
18.
VV, 88-98, Murray's Translation.
21. VV. 860-861, Ibid.
19.
22. VV. 1032-1038, Ibid.
VV. 243-245, Ibid.
23. V. 67, Ibid.
20.
V. 725, Ibid.
24. VV. 521-529, Ibid.
THE THEOSOPHICAL
170
PATH
care of Ino and Athamas. Both of these were frenzied by Hera, so
that Zeus was forced again to interpose his divine power in order to
save his Son, whom he temporarily transformed into a ram. The
care of the child's nurture next devolved upon the nymphs of Mount
Nysa who succeeded in bringing him up safely within a cave. Finally,
when Dionysos had grown up into young manhood, Hera cast him
into a state of frenzy and forced him to wander constantly over the
face of the earth, not only throughout Greek lands but even throughout
India and Egypt and as far westward as Spain, dooming the god
everywhere to meet with mighty opposition. But e\'cntually he over
came all obstacles and was everywhere successful in establishing his
Mysteries.
The Triumph of Dionysos is thus described by Euripides in The
Bacchae. The god himself is the speaker :
Behold God's Son is come into this Land
Of Thebes, even I, Dionysos, whom the brand
Of heaven's hot splendor lit to life, when she
Who bore me, Cadmus' daughter Semele,
Died here. So changed in shape from God to man.
I now do come to Hellas - having taught
All the world else my dances and my rites
Of Mysteries to show me in men's sight
Manifest God. . . . born of Semele to Zeus .
Then to another land, when all things here
Are well, must I fare onward, making clear
My Godhead's might . . . though I veil it with the wan
Form of things that die and walk as man.25
Mine is the soul of that dead life of old.26
Later on in the play the Maenads or inspired women, followers of
Dionysos, sing :
He will come to thee with dancing,
Come with joy and mystery :
With the Maenads at his hest,
Winding, winding to the West.27
Lo, this new God, whom thou dost flout withal,
I cannot speak the greatness wherewith He
In Hellas shall be great ! 28
25.
VV. 1-5, 20-22, 53-54, Murray's Translation.
26. V. 181, Ibid.
27. VV. 565-570, Ibid.
28. VV. 271-273.
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
171
Hard heart, how little dost thou know what seed
Thou sowcst ! Blind before, and now indeed
Most frenzy-fraught ! . . . Wise words being brought
To blinded eyes will seem as things of nought . 20
'Tis thine own impurity
That veils Him from thee. 3 0
Is it so hard a thing to see That the Spirit of God [that is, the mystic Savior ] ,
whate'er i t be
The Eternal and Nature-born - these things be strong ?
. What else is wisdom ? 3 1
Therefore I counsel thee, . .
Receive this Spirit whoe'er he be,
To Thebes in glory. Greatness manifold
Is all about Him. Do thou let Him live ;
For if he die, then Love herself is slain,
And nothing joyous in the world again.32
.
Oh, had ye seen
Truth in the hour ye would not, all had been
Well with ye, and the Child of God your friend.33
As the lord of life and death, as the sinking and the rising sun, as the Ruler
of the Under-world, and as the principle of vitality, breathing in beauty and
freshness from the ground Dionysos is the Earth-cleaver, as he is the Earth
shaker. The gates of Hades cannot prevail against him, nor the bars of earth
restrain.84
Therefore, a fter triumphing throughout the world, he descended
into Hades, the lower world, and led forth his mother Semele, rechris
tened as Thyone, the inspired,35 who thereafter among the Olympian
divinities shone forth in radiant splendor as the divine mother and
universal queen.36 In after times the Troezenians showed the place
whence the Twain had arisen, within the sacred precinct of their temple
of Artemis Soteira 37 ; but the Argives maintained that Dionysos had
emerged with his mother from the Alcyonian Lake.38 So the two
Divinities, rising from the depths of Hades, ascended up unto Heaven
and have ever thereafter ranked not only as divinities of earth, but
of heaven as well.
VV. 358-359, 480, Murray's Translation.
30. V. 502, Ibid.
31.
VV. 895-898,
32. VV. 769-774, Ibid.
33. VV. 1342- 1 344, Ibid.
34. Robert Brown, Jr.,
The Great Dionysiak Myth, Longmans, Green and Co., 1878, II, p. 3 1 .
35. Apollodoros,
I II, 45.
36. Orphic Hymns, xliv ; Nonnus viii, 409.
37. Pausanius, II, 31, 2.
38. Pausanius, II, 37, 5 ; Clemens Alexandrinus, Exhort. p. 22.
29.
Ibid.
THE
172
5.
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
EPITI-n�Ts OF DIONYsos
Dionysos is, above all, polyonymos, a God of many names, and
polymorphos, of many forms. Most of his epithets, however, are
readily explained by a knowledge of the complete Dionysiac Myth, as
the myth was developed in the Greek mysteries. They refer especially
to his twofold character as the suffering and mortal god Zagreus,
and as the immortal and reborn Savior. Thus, with reference to his
two mothers, Demeter and Kore-Semele, he is dimetor1 having two
mothers ; diphues1 two-nurtured ; dithyreites, He of the Twin En
trances ; and dithyranibos, He of the Two Portals. He is trigonos
or thrice-born : first, born as Zagreus ; secondly, born prematurely as
a seven-months' child at the death of Semele ; and thirdly, born mature
ly from the thigh of Zeus. He is triphues1 of threefold nature, as the
Producer, Preserver, and Destroyer. He is fireborn and thigh-nur
tured. Thus in the Orphic Hymns the poet sings :
Loud-sounding Dionysos most divine,
Inspiring God, a twofold shape is thine :
Thy various names and attributes I sing,
0 first-born, thrice-begotten, Bakchic King.30
Born of two mothers, honor'd and divine :
Lysian, Evian Bakchos, various-nam'd,
Of Gods the offspring, secret, holy, fam'd.40
From fire descended, raging, Nysian king,
From whom initiatory rites do spring,
Liknitan Bakchos, pure and fiery bright,
Prudent, crown-bearer, wand'ring in the night :
Nursed on Mount Mero, all-mysterious pow'r,
Triple, ineffable, Zeus' secret flow'r :
Ericapaeus [one of the titles of the macrocosmic
Phanes] , first-begotten nam' d
Of Gods the father, and the offspring fam'd,
Bearing a scepter, leader of the choir,
Whose dancing feet, phrenetic furies fire. . .
Born of two mothers, Amphietos bright :
Love, mountain-wand'ring, clothed with skins of deer,
Apollo golden-ray'd, whom all revere.41
A paean in honor of Dionysos recently discovered at Delphi, thus
begins :
39.
Orphic Hymns,
xxx,
41.
1-4, Taylor's Translation.
Ibid., Iii, 3-12, 15-17.
40.
Ibid., I, 2-4.
STUDIES
IN ORPHISM
1 73
Come, 0 Dithyrambos [ God of the two portals] , Bakchos come,
Evios [God of esctasy] , thyrsos-lord [Bearer of the mystic wand ] ,
Braites [an epithet o f doubtful import] , come,
Bromios [God of the thunder-cry] come, and coming with thee bring,
Holy hours of thine own holy spring Evoe, Bakchos, hail, Paean [ Healer] hail ! 42
Also many of the titles refer to Dionysos in his character as the
mystic savior : thus he is Soter, the Savior ; Eleuthereus, the restorer
to freedom ; Lysios, the releaser ; and Lyaios, the deliverer from care.
In reference to his descent into Hades he is Rexichthon or the Earth
cleaver ; as Thesmophoros he is the lawgiver, and as Teletarchos, the
founder of the Mysteries ; and as Theoinos, he is the God of the
mystic drink which confers immortality. He is identified at times
not only with his father Zeus but also with the first of the five cosmic
rulers, Phanes Protogonos, the first-born, the macrocosmic germ of
manifested life, as is shown by the following Orphic Fragment :
He who is called through the earth both Phanes and Dionysos
And King Eubouleus [the Wise Counsellor] and the widely seen Sparkler,
Antauges [the Spiritual Sun] .
And other men of the earth by other names call him.
First of all came he to light and then was he named Dionysos,
Since he must wander 43 about through the boundless and blessed Olympos.44
Finally some of the manifold epithets of Dionysos, as the principle
of growth and vitality, have been thus excellently explained. Although
in a few cases the exact wording of the paraphrase may be called
into question, the explanation as a whole is decidedly enlightening :
He is the all-potent (Pantodynastes) , permanent (Ambrotos) , life-blood of
the world ( Akratophoros) , and power of reproduction ( Priapos) : which, giving
to all their share of being ( Isodaites ) , appears ( Phan es) blooming ( Antheus)
all around ( Amphithales) in the majesty o f the forest ( Dendrites) , in fruit
( Eukarpos ) , in foliage (Katapogon ) , in the hum of the bee ( B risaios) , in the
flowing of the stream ( Eurychaites ) , in motive power (Elilichthon) , and gener
ally, in the fulness of the earth beneath ( Hyes-Phleon ) , which brings forth
.abundantly ( Karpios) clad in its mantle of green (Ernesipeplos) , ever varying
in phase ( Aiolomorphos ) , and infinite in its changes ( Polymorphos) : which,
being of a mingled nature ( Mise) is androgynous (Thelymorphos) , comprehend-s
both active and passive potentialities ( Diphues) , and shows their double action
(Dimorphos) in the ever-renewing life-power of the vast material world.'�
42. Miss Harrison's Translation.
43. !!.tvEiTat, here associated etymologically with the
word Dionysos.
44. Orphic Frag. vii, apud Macrobium, Saturn., i, 18.
45. Robert
Brown, Jr. : The Great Dionysiak Myth, Longmans, Green and Co., 1878, II, p. 154.
THE
1 74
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
Dionysos as Zagreus is lord of the Underworld, the chthonian and
telluric deity, " \Vho as Amphithales, the Blooming-on-both-sides,
bears sway alike in the Upper and Lower vVorlds ; as Isodaites, the
Equal-divider, portions out life and death to all, and shares the wealth
of nature amongst his subjects ; and as Rexichthon, the Earth-cleaver,
can penetrate to the depths of the Underworld, and rise again un
wearied to Olympos." 46
Valle Crucis Abbey, Wales
THE abbey of Valle Crucis, situated in a dell near the town of
Llangollen, Denbighshire, Wales, is one of the most famous ruins
in that land of many beautiful ruins. Like most of the abbeys in
Wales, it was built by the Normans at or near the site of one of
the old Welsh half-monastic half-educational institutions, which took
part in the struggle of the Celtic Church first against the dominance
of Rome and then against that of Canterbury ; a struggle that ended
in each case in the triumph of the foreign church, supported as Rome
was by Saxon, and as Canterbury was by Saxon and Norman in
vaders, and by Rome. Llangollen is associated with the memory of
Collen, a saint of the old British or Celtic church renowned for his
contests with Gwyn ab Nudd, King of the Beautiful Family of Fairies ;
like all the Vv elsh saints except St. David, he has not been canonized
at Rome. As a Norman institution, Valle Crucis belonged to the
Cistercians.
Tm! accompanying illustration gives but little idea of the ruins
of Tintern Abbey, on the river Wye, in Monmouthshire, \Vales. The
building, which is Early English, is almost entire, with the exception
of the roof, and may be ranked as one of the finest of the monastic
ruins in Great Britain. It was founded for the Cistercians by Walter
de Clare, a Marcher Lord, in 1 1 3 1 .
Tintern Abbey, Wales
46.
Robert Brown, Jr., The Great Dionysiak Myth, pp. 154-155.
�23
S TUDIES I N ORPHISM: by F. S. Darrow,
v.
A. M., Ph. D. ( Harv.)
Two INTERPRETATIONS OF THE ZACREUS-DIONYSOS MYTH
1.
INTRODUCTION
No one can study ancient philosophies seriously without per
ceiving that the striking similitude of conception between all - in
their exoteric form very often, in their hidden spirit invariably - is
the result of no mere coincidence but of a concurrent design : and that
there was during the youth of mankind one language, one knowledge, one uni
versal religion, when there were no churches, no creeds or sects, but when every
man was a priest unto himself. 1 Indeed, there are few myths in any religious
system worthy of the name but have a historical as well as a scientific foundation.
" Myths," justly observes Pococke,2 " are now proved to be fables, just in propor
tion as we misunderstand them : truths, in proportion as they were once under
stood ! " 8
She also declares that there are
Mysteries, past and future." '
As truly stated by Ragon :
"
seven
keys, which open the
The ancient Hierophants have combined so cleverly the dogmas and symbols
of their religious philosophies that these symbols can be fully explained only by
the combination and knowledge of all the keys.5
But,
shall one, for fear of incurring the penalty of being called a superstitious fool and
even a liar, abstain from furnishing proofs - as good as any - only because that
day, when all the seven keys shall be delivered unto Science or rather unto the
men of learning and research in the symbolical department, has not yet dawned ? 8
Allegory and personification are essential to the genius of anti
quity, and this fact that several keys are requisite to an understanding
of the significance of mythology is explicitly stated by the Neoplaton
ist Sallust as follows :
Fables may be interpreted theologically, physiologically, psychologically, physi
cally, and lastly, compositely. Fables are theological which make use of nothing
corporeal but which speculate upon the very essence of the Gods themselves :
such as the fable which asserts Kronos devoured his children : for it occultly
intimates the nature of an intellectual or spiritual god, since the intellect returns
1.
The Secret Doctrine, I, p. 341, Point Lorna Edition.
or Truth in Mythology, London, 1852, Preface, p. viii.
Point Loma Edition.
4.
Ibid. I, p. 325.
5.
3.
2. E. Pococke, India in Greece
The Secret Doctrine, I, p. 339,
Ibid. I, p. 363.
6.
Ibid. I, p. 323.
324
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
unto itself. But we speculate upon fables physiologically when we refer to the
energies of the Gods in the world : as when considering Kronos to be the same
as Time we call the moments of time his children and state that the children are
devoured by their parent. We employ fables psychologically when we contemplate
the energies of the soul : because the intellections of our souls, though by a dis-
cursive energy they proceed into other things, yet abide in their parents. Fables
are regarded physically when divinities are considered to be and are named by
corporeal objects, such as Isis, earth ; Osiris, humidity ; Typhon, heat, etc. . . .
O f these various interpretations o f myths the theological are characteristic of
philosophers ; the physical and psychological of the poets ; but the composite
belong to the Mysteries since it is the intention of all mystic rites to conjoin us
with the world and the Gods. 7
2.
ASTRONOMICAL KE:Y
The astronomical significance of the myth of the Mystic Savior,
invariably present in all its various forms, can be easily recognized at
least in its broad outlines. It is thus given by Madame Blavatsky:
The Christians . . . adhere to a religion entirely ba sed upon solar and lunar
worship. It is useless and vain for the Protestants to exclaim against the Roman
Catholics for their " Mariolatry " based on the ancient cult of lunar goddesses,
when they themselves worship Jehovah ( that is, the equivalent of the Orphic
Demiurge ) pre-eminently a lunar god : and when both churches have accepted in
their theologies the Sun-Christ and the Lunar Trinity.•. . . It was in the Bakchos
myth that lay concealed for long and dreary centuries both the future vindication
of the reviled " Gods of the Nations " and the lost clue to the enigma o f
Jehovah.'. . . Dionysos i s one with Osiris, with Krishna and with Buddha
(the heavenly wise) and with the coming (tenth ) Avatar, the glorified Spiritual
Christos. 10
The astronomical import of the following points in the Zagreus
Dionysos Myth are obvious as soon as attention is called to them.
Dionysos is born prematurely at the death of Semele on Christmas
Day, that is at the time of the winter-solstice, just at the point in the
sun's path which marks the beginning of the new year, at that point
which ushers in the new season of springtime growth and rebirth ;
but as the winter is doomed still to linger on for some time, this birth
is immature, a seven months' child, and the Reborn Savior is born
maturely from the thigh of Zeus not at Christmas but at Easter in the
joyous springtime of the Resurrection.
9.
8. The Secret Doctrine, I, p. 388, Point Loma Ed.
7. On the Gods and the World, IV.
Isis Unveiled, II, p. 527.
10. The Secret Doctrine, II, p. 419-420, Point Loma Ed.
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
325
So also the symbolism of the sacred dress, which was worn during .
the celebration of the Mysteries, has an evident connexion with the
astronomical meaning of the myth. The purple robe typified the Solar
heat, and the fawn skin, which was thrown over this, hanging from the
right shoulder, symbolized by its spots the heavenly vault at night,
the moon and the assemblage of the stars, as is stated by Diodorus.11
The golden belt, which completed the ceremonial dress, typified the
Ocean of life, aglow from the rays of the Spiritual Sun. Further
more, it is declared in the myth that when Dionysos was born from
the thigh of Zeus, Hermes, the Psychopomp, or Guide of the Soul,
received the infant divinity on a fawn skin. The symbolism of the
sacred dress is clearly given in the following Orphic fragment :
He who desires in pomp of sacred dress
The sun's resplendent body to express,
Should first a robe assume of purple bright,
Like fair bright beams combin'd with fiery light :
On his right shoulder, next, a fawn's broad hide
Widely diversified with spotted pride
Should hang, an image of the pole divine,
And Daedal stars, whose orbs eternal shine.
A golden splendid zone, then, o'er the vest
He next should throw, and bind it round his breast :
In mighty token, how with golden light,
The rising sun, from earth's last bounds and night
Sudden emerges and with matchless force,
Darts through old Ocean's billows in his course.12
While treating of the mythical and historical Orpheus some of the
points of solar connexion in the Dionysos Myth were noted.18 And
it is important to keep in mind that Dionysos typifies the spiritual
Night-Sun and is distinct from Helios, the symbol of the visible physi
cal sun and from Apollo, the occult potency of the spiritual Day-Sun.
Thus, Dionysos is Nyktelios, Lord of the Night, and Nyktipolos or
Night-wandering, and Aristophanes represents the Mystics as calling
upon Iakchos, the Eleusinian Mystery-name of Zagreus-Dionysos as
" the Morning Star that shinest nightly."
Macrobius quotes an
Orphic verse which speaks of " The Sun whom men call Dionysos,"
H
11. Diodorus Siculus, I, 1 1 .
12. Macrobius, Saturnal£a, I, 18 (Taylor's Translation ) ;
Thomas Taylor, Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, 2d ed. Pamphleteer, London, 1816, pp.
480-1.
13. Studies in Orphism, I, Tm: Ta�osoPHICAL PATH, II, 4, April 1912, pp. 256-7,
260, 267-269.
14. The Frogs, v, 343 (Rogers' Translation) .
THE
326
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
while another Orphic fragment says : " He is called Dionysos because
he whirls in circular 1notion through the immeasurably extended heav
ens." And the Eumolpic verses state that " Dionysos with face of
flame glistens like a Star with his rays." Lastly Diodorus in speaking
of Osiris observes :
And when these are translated into Greek, Osiris means many-eyed, for
throwing his rays on all sides, he seems to behold the whole earth and sea as if
with many eyes. And the Poet ( Homer) thus speaks of him in these words.
" Helios, who sees and hears all things." And among the Hellenes some of the
most ancient mythologists called Dionysos Osiris or Seirios ( that is, the Scorch
ing or Hot-One ) , by a slight change of name.15
Many of the epithets of Dionysos are likewise obviously of a solar
significance. Thus, he is Antauges, the Sparkler ; Aithiopais, the child
of the Sun-Burnt-Land ; Chrysopes, the Golden-faced ; Chrysokomes,
the Golden-haired ; Chrysomitres or Gold-mitred ; Pyropos or Ficry
faced ; Pyrisporos or Fire-engendered ; and Pyrigenes or Fire-born.
Also the following fragment of an Orphic Invocation was presumably
addressed to Dionysos :
" Oh, all-ruling Sun, Spirit of the Universe ; Power of the Uni
verse ; Light of the Universe ! "
Finally, the solar significance of the Dionysos myth is disclosed by
the four animal-symbols which are associated with the god : the ram,
Aries ; the bull, Taurus ; the lion, Leo ; and the serpent, Draco. These
four symbols are presumably identical with the Evangelical zoolatry,
that is, the worship of the sacred animals associated with the writers
of the Four Gospels, namely, the bull, the eagle ( a substitute for the
ram) , the lion, and the angel ( " in reality the Cherub, or Seraph, the
fiery-winged serpent. " )
It should be noted that all four of the animal-symbols are asso
ciated not only with Dionysos, but with Phanes, the first of the macro
cosmic powers, and with Zeus, the Demiurge, as well. Thus, Proklos
says :
16
These things Orpheus has revealed about Phanes ; for the first God bears
with him the heads of animals, of a bull, of a serpent, and of a lion - all sprung
from the Primeval Egg.17
And again :
15.
Diodorus Siculus, I, 1 1 .
16. The Secret Doctrine, I, p. 363, Point Loma Edition.
17. I. P. Cory, Ancient Fragments, 2d ed. London, 1832, p. 299.
STUDIES
IN
327
ORPHISM
The Theologer ( Orpheus) places around him ( Phanes) the heads of a ram,
a bull, a lion and a serpent.18
When Zagreus was attacked by the Titans he assumed among
other forms the shape of a ram, and likewise he was transformed into
a ram by Zeus when Hera attempted to destroy Dionysos by making
his guardians Ino and Athamas frenzied.19
The bull, symbolical of virile strength, and the lion, typifying the
destructive power of the sun, are common solar emblems. Therefore,
Zagreus, as the mighty Horned Hunter, a figure which unites the horn
of the bull with the predatory instincts of the lion, is addressed in the
Bacchae of Euripides as " Mountain Bull and Lion of the Burning
Flame."
The bull, and especially the serpent, play important roles in the
Zagreus-Dionysos myth, for Zeus assumed the form of a dragon when
he begot Zagreus, as is shown by the following quotation from St.
Clement of Alexandria :
20
Pherephatta (one of the many names of the Earth Goddess ) has a child in
the form of a bull, as a . . . poet (that is, Orpheus ) sings, " The bull the
dragon's father and the father of the bull, the dragon ; on a hill the herds
man's hidden ox-goad," alluding, I suppose, under the phrase " the herdsman's
ox-goad " to the thyrsos or mystic wand carried by the Bacchanals.21
We have already perceived that the mystic worshipers invoke
Dionysos in the Bacchae of Euripides as " Snake of the Hundred
Heads."
Serpents or images of serpents were regularly carried in the mys
tic processions held in honor of Dionysos, while the god himself as an
infant was snake-crowned. Therefore, in art the Maenads or inspired
women-followers of Dionysos are often represented either as carrying
serpents, or as having them interwoven in their hair, and it has been
rightly pointed out that :
22
The connexion between the serpent and Dionysos as the solar Lord of Time
appears somewhat occultly in those myths in which the Sun-god slays some
dracontic monster, spawn of earth, which has been warmed into life by his beams ;
as Apollo slays the Python and Dionysos Kampe, the Winding-one ; that is,
the sun in his resistless career across the heavens, reaches the turning-points in
18. I. P. Cory, A ncient Fragmen ts, 2d. Ed. London, 1832, p. 299.
Orphism, IV, Tm: THEoSOPHICAL PATH, III, 3, Sept. 1912, pp. 169- 170.
21.
Protrep. II , 16.
22.
Studies in
Ibid. 168.
Studies in Orphism, IV, Tm: Tm:osorH1CAL PATH, III, 4,
September 1912, p. 168.
19.
20.
328
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
the East and the West, and devours and destroys the circles and cycles of time,
which he himself marks out and brings into existence.28
The serpent symbol has four principal points of contact with
Dionysos ; first, as a type of earth-Ii£e ; secondly, as a symbol of time
and eternity ; thirdly, as a type of wisdom ; and fourthly, as a solar
emblem. Thus in the Egyptian " Book of the Dead " we read :
I am the Serpent-soul of the Earth, whose length is years laid out, and I am
born daily. I am the Soul of the Earth in the parts of the earth. I am laid out
and am born, decay and become young daily.2�
This is the life-giving serpent that broods over the waters of space
and appears twined around the Orphic Mundane Egg. Sanchounia
thon says in the Phoenician Cosmogony :
The serpent was esteemed . . . to be the most inspired of all the reptiles and
of a fiery nature ; inasmuch as it exhibits an incredible swiftness, moving by its
spirit, without either hands or feet or any of those external members by which
other animals effect their motion. And in its progress it assumes a variety of
forms, moving in a spiral course and darting forward with whatever degree of
swiftness it pleases. It is, moreover, long-lived and has the quality not only of
putting off its old age and assuming a second growth but of receiving at the same
time an increase of its size and strength. . . . Upon which account this animal
is introduced in the sacred rites and Mysteries.25
St. Justin, the early Christian Apologist, is surely correct when
he says :
Along with each of those whom you esteem Gods there is painted a serpent,
a great symbol and mystery.26
3.
PSYCHOLOGICAL :KJty
The ceremonies of the Mysteries are their cloak. The simple look
only at the garment, but the initiated see not merely the cloak but also
that which the cloak conceals. As Dionysos in the sky is the toiling
Savior Sun, ever rising and ever setting, ever causing life to bud in
the spring, to flower in the summer, to die in the winter, and to be
reborn next Easter-time ; so Dionysos in man is the Deliverer who
frees human souls from their cave-prisons of the flesh, triumphing
over death, for he did himself descend into the underworld and yet
arose therefrom, thus teaching man that " Whoso shall lose his life,
23.
24.
Robert Brown, Jr., The Great Dionysiak Myth, London, 1878, II, pp. 72-73.
Chapter lxxxvii.
25. I. P. Cory, Ancient Fragments, 2d. Ed. London,
1832, pp. 17-18.
26. First Apology, xxvii.
STUDIES
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ORPHISM
shall yet find it." He is the bestower of sacred bliss in that he reveals
how to live freely according to the dictates of nature. He is the soul
of all I if e, the dispenser of real wealth and wisdom, and doth offer his
gifts freely to all the peoples of the earth. As the human soul, the
spiritual life of man, the individuality which by rebirth is regenerated
and restored to its pristine nobility, he shows how man can rebecome
a god.
This psychological key is given by Macrobius in his Neoplatonic
commentary on the Somnium Scipionis:
By Dionysos the Orphics meant to signify the Hylic Nous (that is, the human
soul incarnated in the material world) , which is born from the Impartible or
Indivisible (the Divine Mind ) , and is separated in various parts (the different
personalities ) . Therefore in the Orphic Mysteries Dionysos is represented by
traditions as torn into separate limbs and the pieces buried in a tomb made empty
by the resurrection of the God intact ; which signifies that the Nous (the human
soul) which we call the Mind, by making itself divisible from being indivisible
and by becoming indivisible from being divisible incarnates in all forms of nature
and yet does not abandon the mysteries of its own being.27
So also Hermeias says i
" This God ( Dionysos ) is the cause of rebirth."
Therefore, there can be no doubt but that the story of the murder
and resurrection of Zagreus-Dionysos is the story of how the Pilgrim
soul loses and later regains its heaven-born wings - the story of the
deathless and birthless soul, successively resurrecting and reincarnat
ing, living through death and life, returning to earth again and yet
again ; the Divine Man for whom " the hour will never strike," the
first-begotten, fire-born son of the Father-in-heaven ; for in the words
of Proklos : " The whole demiurgic ( or creative) activity of the Gods
has its end in rebirth."
And again i
21
20
The Spirit Within us is the true image of Dionysos. He therefore who acts
erroneously in regard to It and who after the manner of the Titans sunders
Its impartible nature through manifold falsehood certainly sins against Dionysos
himself.80
Furthermore, that the Greeks thus interpreted the myth, is express
ly stated by the great Christian Neoplatonist, Origen.81
Thus Plutarch declares :
We have heard the theologists both in verse and in prose say that the Deity
27. I, 12.
28. In Phaedone, p. 87.
29. In Timaeo, V, 31.
30. In Cratylo, quoted by Thomas Taylor, Works of Plato, London, 1804, V, p. 693. 3 1 . Contra Celsum, IV, 17.
330
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
is of its nature incorruptible and eternal, but yet because of a decree of fate
and of reason, It suffers changes by Itself, being sometimes kindled into a fire
and making all things alike, and at other times becoming manifold in different
shapes, appearances, and powers, like unto the world. . . . The wiser men, cloak
ing their meaning from the profane, call the change into fire "Apollo " from Its
unity,32 and Phoibos from Its purity and incorruption ; but the condition and
change of turning and conversion into air, water, and earth, and the production
of the stars and the various kinds of plants and animals, they enigmatically denote
by the terms " Exile " and " Dismemberment " and they then call the God
" Dionysos, Zagreus, Nyktelios, and Isodaites.83 They also tell of certain destruc
tions and disappearances, deceases and rebirths, which are riddles and fables
pertaining to the aforementioned transformations ; and they sing the Dithyrambic
Song in honor of Dionysos, filled with suffering and allusions to a change of state
that brought with it wanderings backwards and forwards and dispersion . . 84
. . . The stories that are related about the dismemberment of Dionysos and
the attack of the Titans upon him and o f their tasting his slain body and their
punishment a fterwards . . . are but a myth representing the rebirth of the soul.
For what is unreasonable, disorderly, and boisterous, being not divine but demon
iacal, the ancients term Titans, that is, tormented and punished, from Ttvw the
Greek word, meaning to punish.8�
.
Consequently, in view of such explicit and manifold testimony
from antiquity, it is certain that the myth of the dismemberment of
Zagreus was intended to be a dramatic version of the history of the
wanderings of the Pilgrim-soul throughout the material universe.
Demeter, the Earth Goddess, is the mother, and Zeus, the God of
Heaven, the father, because the soul is the child both of heaven and of
earth. Dionysos is Dimetor, having two mothers - Demeter, the
immortal Goddess, and Semele, the mortal Virgin ; because the soul
is a Pilgrim from the heavenly homeland incarnated in humanity. 80
The symbology of the Sacred Marriages of the myth is thus ex
plained by Proklos :
Theologists signify this by means of " Sacred Marriages," which in brief sym
bolize the interaction of divine causation. When they perceive this interaction
to occur between elements of the same kind, they name it " the marriage of Hera
and Zeus," of " Heaven and Earth," " of Kronos and Rhea " ; but when between
lower and higher, they designate it " the marriage of Demeter and Zeus," and
when between superior and inferior they call it " the marriage of Zeus and Kore,"
(that is, the Earth Goddess as a maid) .87
32. As though the word Apollo was derived from d and 7rOAAol, meaning not many,
or one.
33. Studies in Orphism, IV, T m: TRitosoPHICAL PATH, III, 3, Sept. 1912,
34. On the Ei at Apollo's Temple at Delphi, ix.
35. On the Eating of Flesh,
pp. 1 72-4.
36. Studies in Orphism, IV, Tm·: TmiosoPHICAL PATH, III, 3, Sept. 1912,
Or. I, 7.
pp. 169, 172.
37. In Parmenide, II, 214.
STUDIES
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331
ORPHISM
vVe have previously noted that the adjective Liknites is an import
ant epithet of Dionysos. 3 8 It is thus explained by Hesychios : " Likni
tes - a title of Dionysos, from the cradle in which they put children
to sleep." In Greek the name Liknon was given both to a fan and
to a shovel-shaped basket. It served three purposes, for it was used,
first, as a fan to winnow grain ; secondly, as a basket to hold grain
and fruit ; and thirdly, as a cradle for a baby. Thus Servius in com
menting upon Virgil's words, " Iacchus' Mystic fan," says :
The mystic fan of Iacchus, that is, the sieve of the threshing-floor.
He
( Virgil) calls it the mystic fan of Iacchus, because the rites of Father Liber
(the Latin name of Dionysos Soter, Dionysos the Savior ) had reference to the
purification of the soul, and men were purified through his Mysteries as grain is
purified by fans.
It is on this account that Isis is said to have placed the limbs
of Osiris, when they had been torn apart by Typhon, on a sieve, for Father Liber
( Dionysos Soter) is the same person ( as Osiris ) , he in whose M ysterics the
fan plays a part, because as we said he purifies souls. \\Therefore, also he is
called Liber because he Liberates or saves, and it is he, who, Orpheus said, was
torn asunder by the Titans.
Greeks Liknites.
Some add that Father Liber was called by the
Moreover, the fan is called by them Liknon, in which ( a s a
cradle ) he is said to have been placed directly after he was born.
Others explain
its being called " Mystic " by saying that the fan is a large wicker vessel in which
peasants, because of its large size, are wont to heap their first fruits and con
secrate it to Liber and Libera ( Persephone, the Earth goddess as a maid ) . Hence
it is called " Mystic."
39
Harpocration adds that :
" The Liknon was serviceable for every rite of Initiation, for
every sacrifi c e."
It was used not only in the celebration of the
" Sacred Marriages," but according to Plutarch it was customary at
Athens during the celebration of ordinary marriages for a boy, both
of whose parents were alive, while carrying a Liknon filled with loaves,
to pronounce the words, " Bad have I fled, better have I found," a formula evidently adopted from the ritual of the Mysteries!1 In
this connexion it is also interesting to note that the early Christian
Church in the celebration of its Eucharist employed two " mystic or
sacred fans " - a custom which still survives in the Greek and Arme
nian churches.42
Therefore the significance of the epithet Liknites and the symbol40
38. Studies in Orphism, IV, Tm; THEOSOPHICAL PATH, III, 3, September 1912, p. 172.
Commentary upon Virgil's Georgics, IV, 166.
40. S. v. -ro XlKvov.
41. Proverbial
Sayings of A lexander, xvi, 1255.
42. Cyril of Scythiopolis, Life of St. Euthymius, 70,
and the Euchologeion (a Service Book of the Eastern Church ) .
39.
THE
332
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
ogy of the Liknon is evident : as a sieve or fan it symbolized purifica
tion ; as a basket filled with the first fruits it served as a symbol
of rebirth ; and lastly as the cradle of the Holy Babe it typifies the
" Manger " of Scripture story.
In considering the symbolical meaning of Hera, the relentless
enemy of Zagreus-Dionysos, the following ancient statements are
suggestive. Chrysippos, a Stoic philosopher of the third century B . c.,
says :
I f this interpretation i s
" Hera is matter and Zeus is Spirit."
correct, Hera must signify primordial matter, a s the antagonistic pole
of the pair of opposites, Spirit and Matter - a conception which is
essentially different from that of receptive organic matter, which is
suffused and vivified by the incarnated Spirit-soul, for this latter con
ception of matter is typified by the Earth-Goddess, Demeter-Kore
Semele, and not the antagonistic and quarrelsome Hera. Further
more, Olympiodoros says :
48
Hera is the supervising guardian of motion and progression, that is, the
spirit of vibratory change, which is of course antagonistic to the essential peace
and serenity
of
the spirit."
The Curetes were not only the protectors of the infancy of Zeus
but are also appointed guardians of Zagreus, and carry the kettledrum
and the tambourine, typifying the natural pendulum-movement, the
cyclic swing of organic life.
The Titans, however, as murderers of Zagreus, the ministers of
Hera's revenge, symbolize the confused movements of a perverted
personal life, enslaved to the emotions ; hence they carry the " false
gifts " with which to beguile the Holy Babe : the top, symbolic of
motion ; the dice, typifying a life ruled by the pairs of opposites, the
sensations of pleasure and pain ; the mirror, suggestive of illusions ;
and the thyrsos, emblematic of rebirth. The giddy, spinning top, and
the maddening throw of the gambler with its attendant ruin, hardly
require any further comment. The symbolism of the mirror proved
very interesting to the ancients. Thus in the language of Proklos it
signifies the inability of the material world to receive the fulness of
spiritual perfection. It is the phenomenal world which beguiles the
young soul by its illusions and false reflections. Plotinos in referring
43.
44.
Clemens Alexandrinus, Homiletics, V, 18, 668 ; Origen, Contra Celsum, IV, 48.
In Phaedone, quoted by Thomas Taylor, Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, 2d ed.
Pamphleteer, London, 1816, p. 473.
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
333
to the mirror of Dionysos, which psychologically speaking typifies
the image of the Higher Self in man, his lower self or personality,
says that the souls of men when they have once seen the image of their
true selves will hasten above, since the soul having become divided
must retrace its path and return to its originally spiritual state. And
just as when it saw its reflection in the material world it went forth
after it, so it must now contemplate its type or idea in the immaterial
noetic or spiritual world, and be joined thereto.•�
Olympiodoros observes that :
The thyrsos is a symbol of the material and parted substance from its scattered
condition ; and on this account it is a Titanic plant. This it was customary to
extend before Dionysos instead of his paternal sceptre ; and through this they
called him down into a partial nature. Indeed, the Titans are Thyrsos-bearers ;
and Prometheus concealed fire in a thyrsos or reed ; after which he is considered
as bringing celestial light into generation, or leading the soul into the body, or
calling forth the Divine Light ( the whole being ungenerated ) into generated exist
ence. Hence Sokrates calls the multitude Thyrsos-bearers Orphically, as living
according to a Titanic Iife.u
From this explanation it appears that the thyrsos as a symbol of
rebirth, physiologically speaking, typifies the nervous system centered
in the spinal-cord surmounted by the brain. Therefore the Bakchic
wand is topped by the pine cone, which also represents " the heart of
Zagreus," which was discovered to be still throbbing by Athena and
given to Zeus - the heart from which the reborn Dionysos sprang
into being and which contains within itself the true explanation of the
mythical " imponderable, incorruptible, incombustible bone believed
throughout the M iddle Ages to be the necessary nucleus of the resur
rection body." The ivy-leaves, " never sere," which are commonly
intertwined around the cone-summit of the thyrsos, also typify immor
tality. From the macrocosmic standpoint the cone symbolizes the
Mundane Egg.
A word or two ought to be added in regard to the " Symbols of
Power " entrusted to Zagreus by his father, namely, the paternal scep
ter and the golden apple. The golden apple was from the Tree of
Life that sprang into being at the marriage of Zeus and Hera in the
Garden of the Hesperides. Thus, the mythical parallelism between
this Greek myth and the story told in Genesis immediately suggests
itself. The mystic objects, whether the " Symbols of Power," or the
45.
Ennead IV, 3.
46. In Phaedone, quoted by Thomas Taylor, Eleusinian and
Bacchic Mysteries, 2d ed. Pamphleteer, London, 1816, p. 477.
334
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
" False Toys," are all connected with the story of the soul's fall into
matter, and the play of the infant Zagreus, is the evolution of the
physical world by means of the involution of the Spiritual life.
As Dionysos is the human soul, so the Titans are the earth-powers,
and the arts that they employed to ensnare Zagreus are symbolical of
the apparently divisible energies of the earth-powers, the powers of
generation. They typify the animal nature or the powers of evil and
darkness, who, however, are ultimately saved in the persons of their
progeny, mankind, by reason of their feast upon the flesh of the slain
Savior. This portion of the myth is the origin of the symbolical rite
of the Eucharist. The Titans are physical and material powers which
divert the Soul from its true Path by means of its longing for things
of sense. The artificial whitening of the Titans' naturally black faces,
symbolizes the disguise and deceit of man's lower or animal nature in
its attempts to mislead and confuse the wavering soul. There was a
direct reference to this part of the myth in the Orphic Baptism.47
The metamorphoses assumed by Zagreus while attempting to es
cape from the stifling grasp of the Titans typify the manifold incarna
tions of the soul in the course of its Pilgrimage through the material
universe. The dismemberment of Zagreus represents the Fall, the
descent of the soul into a body, the incarnation of spirit. The limbs
are first boiled because water is a symbol of the astral world and the
soul first falls into the elemental astral kingdoms. The limbs are later
roasted by fire, the myth thereby typifying the reascent of the soul
purified by its journey through the Cycle of Suffering. The soul is
torn to pieces, that is, scattered abroad throughout the universe by
incarnation. Therefore Zeus, the Divine Father in Heaven, when the
soul reascends to its original home, converts the Titans, physical and
material powers, into his own essence by reducing them to ashes by
means of his thunder-bolt.
Olympiodoros says :
In the first place, then, we are composed of fragments, because through falling
into generation, our life has proceeded into the most distant and extreme divi
sion, but from Titanic fragments, because the Titans are the ultimate artificers
of things and stand immediately next to whatever is constituted from them. But
further, our irrational life is Titanic, by which the rational and higher life is torn
to pieces. And hence when we disperse the Dionysos or the intuitive intellect
contained in the secret recesses of our own nature, breaking in pieces the kindred
47.
Stu dies in Orp hism, III, Tm: Tm:osoPHICAL PATH, III, 1, July 1912, p. 49.
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
335
and divine form of our essence, which communicates, as it were, both with
things subordinate and things supreme, then we become Titans, but when we
establish ourselves in union with this Dionysiac or kindred form, we become Bak
choi, or perfect guardians of our irrational life ; for Dionysos . . . is himself
a guardian divinity, dissolving at his pleasure the bonds by which the soul is
united to the body.
But it is necessary that the passive part of our irrational
nature through which we are bound to the body and which is nothing more than
the resounding echo, as it were, of soul, should suffer the punishment incurred
by descent ( into a body ) . For when the soul casts aside the peculiarity o f her
own nature, she requires a separate but at the same time a multiform body, that
she may again become in need o f the common form, which she has lost through
Titanic dispersion into matter.48
.
.
•
Damascius says :
" This union with the Deity should be an all-perfect at-one-ment, a
return upwards of our soul to the Divine." 49
The throbbing " heart of Dionysos " is said to have been preserved
by Athena, the wisdom-guardian of life, because while the soul is
distributed in the world of generation, the material world of birth
and decay, it is, nevertheless, preserved entire by the protecting power
of the Divine Intelligence. So, also, Apollo, the source of union and
harmony, is called by Proklos " the key-keeper of the fountain of life,"
and as the representative of spiritual life Apollo gathers up the scat
tered limbs of Zagreus that they may be properly buried, that is, con
verted into spirit.50 But the coffin of Zagreus at Delphi was only a
cenotaph because in the significant words of Macrobius " the tomb of
Dionysos was made empty by the resurrection of the God intact." 51
Olympiodoros thus explains the myth :
The form of that which is universal is plucked off, torn in pieces and scattered
into generation, and Dionysos is the Monad of the Titans. . . . In another aspect,
Dionysos is the supervising guardian of generation because he presides over life
and death. . . . But Zeus is said to have hurled his thunder at the Titans ; the
thunder signifying a conversion on high ; for fire naturally ascends, and therefore
Zeus by this means converts the Titans to his own essence. . . . It is necessary
first of all for the soul to place a likeness of herself in the body. Secondly, it
is necessary for her to sympathize with the image as being of like idea, for every
external form or substance is wrought into an identity with its interior essence
through an ingenerated tendency thereto. In the third place, being situated in a
divided nature it is necessary that she should be torn in pieces and fall into a
last separation until through the action of a life of purification she shall raise
48. Quoted by Thomas Taylor, Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, 2d ed., Pamphleteer,
49. Vita Isidori, Photius, ccxlii, 526.
SO. Hymn to the Sun, v 3.
London, 18 16, pp. 473-5.
51. Context given on p. 329.
336
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
herself from the dispersion, loose the bond of sympathy, and act, as of herself
without the external image, having become established according to the first
created life. The like things are fabled in the myth ; for Dionysos because his
image was formed in a mirror, pursued it and thus became distributed into every
thing, but Apollo collected him and brought him up, being a divinity of purifica
tion and the true savior of Dionysos and on this account he is styled in sacred
hymns Dionysites.�2
In the variant forms assumed in the different national myths of
the mystic savior, the symbology of the second Sacred Marriage differs
somewhat. Sometimes, instead of being represented as a second mys
tic union of the Divine All-Father with the Earth-goddess as a mortal
virgin, the normal type, it becomes the sacred marriage of the divine
son, as was noted while considering the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice,
and as is to be seen in the legend of St. Catharine, the Bride of Christ.08
Although in the myth Dionysos is represented as having two mothers,
nevertheless he is also called " the Motherless Mystery," in reference
to his birth from the thigh of Zeus, because the soul is not generated
upon earth but is a sojourner from heaven.u
It is thus evident that Orphism by means of its mystery-drama of
Zagreus-Dionysos taught allegorically the great central truths of the
eternity, the pre-existence, and the rebirth of the human soul, and
the unfoldment of life in accordance with the law of justice.
Can we not still hear the genuine followers of Orpheus declare ? That which we seek is but our other Self,
Other and Higher, neither wholly like
Nor wholly different, the half-life the Gods
Retained when half was given. For each
The complement of each, in truth
A double essence, human and divine.
So that the God is hidden in the man.
Soul 's but a particle of God, sent down to man,
Which doth in turn reveal the world and God.
Thine eyes have seen the soul of man, the deathless .!ioul,
De feated, struggling, purified and blest.
It shall be well with thee as 'tis with us
If only thou art true. The World of life,
The world of death, are but the opposing sides
Of one great orb, and the light shines on both.55
52.
In Phaedrme, quoted by Thomas Taylor, Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, 2d ed.,
Pamphleteer, London, 1816, pp. 473, 476.
PA'l'H, II, 4, April 1912, p. 260.
p. 169.
54.
55.
53.
Studies in Orphism, I, THE THEOSOPHICAi.
Ibid. IV, THE THEoSOPHICAL PATH, III, 3, Sept. 1912,
Lewis Morris : Epic of Hades.
42
STUDIES IN ORPHISM : by F. S. Darrow,
VI.
A.
M., Ph. D. (Harv.)
THE LIFE-HISTORY OF THE SOUL
T HE Orphic conception of the origin and history of the
human soul has had a very important and vital influence
not only upon ancient Greek thought but also upon all
subsequent religious belief in the VV est, for from it
was derived the psychology of Pythagoras and of
Plato as well as of all their myriad followers throughout the ages.
This psychology is based upon the intrinsic connexion of the ).;facro
cosm or Universe with the Microcosm or man. The connexion is
especially discernible in the Orphic teachings in regard to the Seven
Principles of man and the Planetary Chain.
Since man sprang into being from the ashes of the Titans, who
were blasted by the lightning of Zeus, Orphism taught that human
nature is dual or composite, partly base ( Titanic ) , and partly divine
( Dionysiac ) . For, it will be remembered that the Titans feasted upon
the dismembered limbs of Zagreus, thereby assimilating some of the
Divine nature of the Mystic Savior.1 This fundamental dualism gives
rise to the struggle of life. It was therefore the constant endeavor of
the true follower of Orpheus to purify himself from the Titanic ele
ment, hoping thereby eventually, in life after life by the help of Diony
sos Eleuthereus, the Redeemer, to win back union \vith the Deity, a
living particle of which was enshrined within every man. Dion Chry
sostom thus refers to the struggle between the two natures :
I will tell you something which is neither pleasant nor agreeable. We men
are of the blood of the Titans, and since they are hostile to the Gods, we are
not friends with the latter but are ever being punished by them. 2
The other standpoint is thus given by Iamblichus :
There is a faculty of the human mind which is superior to all which is born
or begotten. Through it we are enabled to attain union with the superior Intel
ligences by being transported beyond the scenes of this world and by partaking
of the higher life and peculiar functions of the Heavenly Powers.3
The composite, known as man, is therefore linked on the one hand
to eternity by participation in Divinity but on the other hand is joined
to the material world by generation or incarnation. As this latter
bond constitutes a kind of death or oblivion to the higher forms of
1.
Vide, Studies in Orphism, IV, T m : TH EOSOPHICAL PATH, III, 3 , Sept. 1912, pp. 164-166.
2.
Or. XXX, 550.
3.
Quoted by H. P.
Blavatsky,
Isis Unveiled, I, p. 435.
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
43
life the encasement of the soul in the physical body is comparable to
an incarceration in a living grave. Thus Plato says :
According to some ( namely the followers of Orpheus, Pythagoras and others )
the body i s the sepulcher of the soul, which they consider to be buried in our
present life : or again the body is regarded as the sign of the soul because the
soul signifies ( its wishes ) through the body, and indeed the followers of Orpheus
appear to me to have established the Greek name for body (to wit, awµa) , prin
cipally because the soul suffers in the body punishment for its ( former) guilt and
the body is an enclosure which may be compared to a prison in which the soul is
incarcerated as the ( Greek) word body implies/ until the penalty is paid.5
Elsewhere Plato adds :
I should not wonder if Euripides spoke truly in saying - " \Vho knows
whether to live is not to die and to die, is not to live ? " And we, perhaps are in
reality dead (while living) . For, I have heard from one o f the wise that we are
indeed now dead ; and that the body is our sepulcher and that the part of the
soul which is the seat of the Passions and Desires can be persuaded and influenced
upwards or downwards. 6
In the Iphigeneia at Aulis, Euripides represents his heroine, as
thus ref erring to death while speaking her last farewell to life :
Hail, Light-divine !
Hail, Day in whose hands cloth the Woriel's Torch shine !
In a strange new life must I dwell,
And a strange new lot must be mine.7
And Cicero
teachings :
m
a fragment says, evidently thinking of the Orphic
The ancients whether they were seers or interpreters of the Divine Mind in
the tradition of the Sacred Initiations seem to have known the truth when they
affirmed that we were born into the body to pay the penalty for sins committed
( in former lives) .8
A similar statement 1s likewise made by the Christian writer,
Clement of Alexandria :
The ancient Theologists and prophets also testify that the soul is yoked to
the body by way of punishment and is buried in the body as in a sepulcher.9
It is thus evident that according to the Orphic teachings the soul
4. The English word body seems to be derived from the same root as the word bind.
Therefore apparently it signifies as Plato suggests in the case of the Greek word ( dwµa) ,
the enclosure o f the soul.
5 . Cratylus, 400 c.
6. Gorgias, 492, e-f.
7. vv. 15051508 (Way's translation) .
8. Hortensius, Frag. p. 601.
9. Stromata, III, 3.
44
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
is confined in the body as in prison. Consequently the Orphics not
infrequently identified Hades with the physical universe, and denomi
nated the imprisonment of incarnation, genesis or generation. It was
therefore to escape from this thraldom by kartharsis or purification
that Dionysos, through his prophet Orpheus, taught men the Mys
teries. The Orphic doctrines of the pre-existence, the penance, the
reincarnation and the final purification of the soul seem to have been
amplified with considerable detail in the lost Orphic Manual entitled
The Descent into the Realm of Hades, in which were described the
vicissitudes endured by the immortal soul, preparatory to its final free
dom by penance from the Cycle of Birth.
These teachings in regard to birth and death are well exemplified
in the following fragments from the Orphic poet-prophet Empedocles :
More will I tell thee, too ; there is no birth
O f all things mortal, no end in ruinous death ;
But a mingling only and interchange of the mixed
There is, and birth is but its name with men. .
Foolish they
Who trust that what-is-not can e'er become,
Or aught that-is can wholly die away.
From what-is-not what-is can ne'er become :
So that what-is should e'er be all destroyed,
No force could compass and no ear hath heard.
For there 'twill be forever where 'tis set,N o wise man dreams such folly in his heart,
That only whilst we live what men call life
We have our being and take our good and ill,
And ere as mortals we compacted be,
And when as mortals we be loosed apart,
We are as nothing. . . .
I will report a twofold truth. Now grows
The One from many into being. Now
Even from the One disparting come the Many.
Twofold the birth, twofold the death of things :
For, now, the meeting of the Many brings
To birth and death : and, now, whatever grew
From out this sundering flies apart and dies,
And this long interchange shall never end. 10
Orphism did not sunder " the twin doctrines of Karma and Rein
carnation " but enthroned Dike, the Goddess of Justice upon the right
hand of Zeus, teaching that " Justice revealed o f old sits with Zeus in
10.
Leonard's translation.
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
45
the might of eternal laws." 1 1 Thus, two of the manifold epithets of
Dionysos have an obvious connexion with the doctrine of Karma,
namely Aisymnetes, " The Appointer of Destiny " and Isodaites " The
Equal Divider." 12
The relation of the doctrine to Orphic teaching is thus given by
Demosthenes :
Justice, holy and unswerving, she whom Orpheus, the Institutor of our Most
Revered Mysteries, declares to be seated by the throne of Zeus.1 3
And in the great Orphic Mystery Play of Euripides, The Bacchae,
the Maenads thus call upon the Goddess :
Thou Immaculate on high :
Thou Recording Purity :
Thou that stoopest, Goldenwing,
Earthward, manward, pitying.H
Finally the poet declares in one of th e Orphic Hymns :
I sing the all-seeing eye of Dike of fair-form,
Who sits upon the holy throne of Zeus,
The king and on the life of mortals doth look down,
And heavy broods her j ustice on the unjust.15
First and foremost it is necessary to keep in mind that Orphism
proclaims in clarion tones the heavenly and divine origin of the soul.
It is a particle of the Divine Breath, imprisoned in human form. It is
" rooted in the celestial element." lft Before its fall into generation,
before its first incarnation in the physical universe, it lived blessed and
serene in company with the Gods and was in fact itself a God. Thus
Empedocles sings :
It stands decreed by fate, an ancient ordinance of the immortal Gods, estab
lished from everlasting, ratified by ample oaths that, when a Spirit of that Race,
which hath inherited the length of years divine, sinfully stains his limbs with
blood, he must go forth to wander thrice ten thousand years from heaven, passing
from birth to birth through every form of mortal change : shifting the toilsome
paths of life without repose, even as I now roam, exiled from God, an outcast
in this world, the bondsman of insensate strife.11
1 1 . Sophocles, O e dipus at Colonus, vv. 1381-1382.
12. Vide, Studies in Orp hism, IV,
Tm: THEOSOPHICAL PATH, III, 3, Sept. 1912, pp. 172- 1 74.
13. c. Aristogeit. Or. I, XXV.
14. vv. 370-372 ( Murray's translation ) .
15. Hymn LXII.
16. Orphic Frag. quoted
by 0. Gruppe in Griechische Mythologie, Miinchen, 1906, II, p. 1035.
17. Symond's t ranslation.
THE
46
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
The Divine Spirit in its process of descent suffers a sort of intoxi
cation. Forgetful of its natal country, the world from which it comes,
its only hope of regaining its lost knowledge is by the practice of vir
tue.18 The Spirit remained at peace above in the Inerratic Sphere
until like Narcissus it vie\ved its reflection in the Mirror of Dionysos, 1 9
that is in the physical world of flux, into which it madly plunged, mis
taking the image for the reality, in its intoxication drinking a draft of
Forgetfulness of Eternal Truth from the bowl or Crater of Diony
sos whence, plunged in the ever-flowing stream of sensation and gene
ration, it is born upon this earth " The Cave of Lethe or Forgetful
ness " ; being clothed " in a strange garment of flesh." 2 0 Dut in some
cases the oblivion to the Heavenly Homeland is more complete than
in others, for " the Dry Souls," that is unintoxicated, the truly wise
retain many memories of the Ideal. 2 1
In regard to the Fall of the Spirit, i\facrobius in his Commentary
upon Cicero's Dream of Scipio states :
As soon, therefore, as the soul gravitates towards body in this production
of herself, she begins to experience a material tumult, that is, matter flowing into
her essence. And this is what Plato remarks in the Phaedo, that the soul is drawn
into the body staggering with recent intoxication : signifying by this, the new
drink of matter's impetuous flood, through which the soul becoming defiled and
heavy is drawn into an earthly abode. . . . But the Starry Bowl ( the Crater
of Dionyso_s) , placed between Cancer and Leo, is a symbol of this mystic truth,
signifying that descending souls first experience intoxication in that part of the
heavens through the influx of matter. Hence, oblivion, the companion of intoxi
cation, there begins silently to creep into the recesses of the soul. For if souls
retained in their descent to bodies the memory of Divine Concerns, of which they
were conscious in the Heavens, there would be no dissension among men about
Divinity. But all indeed, in descending drink of oblivion, though some more,
and others less. On this account, though truth is not apparent to all men on the
earth, yet all exercise their opinions about it ; because a defect of memory is the
origin of opinion. But those discover most who have drunk least of oblivion
(Lethe ) because they easily remember what they had known before in the
Heavens.22
The following statements of Olympiodoros are filled with meaning
in this connexion :
The soul descends after the manner of Persephone into generation but is dis18.
Cf. Macrobius, Som. Seip., I, 8, 3.
19.
Plotinus, Ennead, iv, 3, 12.
20.
Empedo-
cles, fr. 126, Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 2te. Auf'I. erster Band, Berlin, 1906.
21.
Bywater, Heraclt'.ti Rel., p. 30.
22.
Macrobius, Som. Seip., I, 12.
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
47
tributed by generation ( or incarnation in the material universe ) , after the manner
o f Zagreus : and she is bound to the body a fter the manner of Prometheus and
the Titans ; she frees herself therefore from its bonds by exercising the strength
of Heracles but she is collected into one through the assistance of A pollo and the
savior Athena by philosophizing in such a way as truly to purify herself.23
As according to this conception the original cause of the soul's
descent was sin, its imprisonment in the body has a penitentiary pur
pose. The earth is a " cave roofed over by the heavens. " 2 4
The soul upon first beholding its unfamiliar prison-house wept
and lamented loudly, 20 but it soon discovered that it could regain its
heavenly freedom only by yoking itself to the Cycle of generation or
the wheel of rebirth. This cyclic evolution is thus described by Empe
docles, who says the exile
wanders from the home of the Blessed, being born into all kinds of mortal forms,
passing from one laborious path of life to another.
For the mighty air chases
him into the sea, and the sea spits him forth upon the dry land, and the earth casts
him into the light of the blazing sun and the sun hurls him into the eddies of
the
air.
She takes him f rom
the others
and
he is
hated of them all.26
In the course of this Pilgrimage the soul leaves no realm of nature
unvisited but " she drees her weird on earth and sky and sea." 2 1
The divine spirit in man, his Higher Self, a fallen angel doing
penance for its sins can recover its lost inheritance only by becoming
pure or holy, " a Saint." 28 Mere ceremonial purity is unavailing, for
in the words of the Orphic poet the soul " must fast from sin." 29
Therefore, as Miss Harrison well says : " Consecration, perfect purity
issuing in divinity is the keynote of Orphic faith, the goal of Orphic
ritual." 3° Consequently Empedocles thus rebukes the heedless and the
unbrotherly : " Do you not see that in the thoughtlessness of your
hearts ye are devouring one another ? " 31
Orphism taught that the soul, upon leaving the body, entered upon
an intermediate state of rewards and punishments. Thus, in a Dirge
of Pindar, the poet declares, as a believer in the teachings of Orpheus :
23. On the Phaedo of Plato, quoted by Thomas Taylor, Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries,
2d ed. Pamphleteer, London, 1816, p. 57.
24. Empedocles, Frag. 120, Diels, 2te. Aufl.
25. Ibid., Frag. 1 18, 121.
26. Ibid., Frag. 1 15, 1 16.
27. Ibid., Frag. 1 17.
28 Ka!Japos
Kai �a1os.
29. Empedocles, Frag. 144, Diels. 2te. Aufl. cf. the Second of the Logia of Jesus
discovered in 1897 : " Except ye fast from the world."
30. J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena
to the study of Greek Religion, 2d ed., 1908, p. 487.
31. Empedoclcs, Frag. 136-137,
Deils, 2te. Aufl.
48
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
Though
Yet the
Still in
It alone
PATH
the body yield to death,
shape of vital breath
life continueth :
is heaven's conferring . 32
Plato and Virgil both give the duration of this intermediate state
as approximately one thousand years, which seems to have been the
customary Orphic teaching, and an Orphic fragment declares :
They who are pious in their life beneath the rays of the sun enjoy a gentler
lot when they have died, in the beautiful meadow around deep-flowing Acheron.33
Purgatory was symbolized as an ever-flowing sea of mud. Of this
Plato represents Socrates as saying :
I conceive that the founders of the Mysteries had a real meaning an d were n ot
mere triflers when they intimated in a figure long ago, that he who passed un
sanctified and uninitiated into the world below will live in a slough, but that he
who arrives there after initiation and purification will dwell with the Gods.31
Genuinely Orphic is the Third Olympian Ode of Pindar :
Throughout the happy fields of light
When Phoebus with an equal ray
Illuminates the balmy night
And gilds the cloudless day
In peaceful, unmolested j oy,
The good their smiling hours employ. . .
And in their j oyous calm abodes
The recompense of Justice they receive :
And in the fellowship of Gods
Without a tear uncounted ages live.35
Shines for them the sun's warm glow
When 'tis darkness here below :
And the ground before their towers,
Meadow-land with purple flowers,
Teems with incense-bearing treen,
Teems with fruit of golden sheen,
0 'er that country of desire,
Ever as rich gifts are thrown
Freely on the far-seen fire,
Blazing from the altar-stone. .
But the souls of the profane,
Far from heaven removed below,
32.
Conington's translation.
33. Frag. 152, Abel.
34. Phaedo, 69 a ;
II, 363 d.
35. Gilbert West's translation slightly altered.
cf. Republic,
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
49
Flit on earth in murderous pain
' Neath the unyielding yoke of woe :
While the pious spirits tenanting the sky
Chant praises to the mighty one on high . 8 6
At the expiration of the intermediate state, the character of the lot
of the soul during each new stage of its career upon earth is deter
mined by the degree of " purity " or " holiness " which it possesses at
the moment of reincarnation. So Empedocles states that the nobler
souls become
prophets and sacred bards, physicians and leaders among men upon the earth :
whence they arise Gods, supreme in honor, sharing the same hearth and tables
with the other Immortals exempt from dour and hurt.37
They from whom Persephone
Due atonement shall receive
For the things that made to grieve,
To the upper sunlight she
Sendeth back their souls once more,
Soon as winters eight are o'er.
From those blessed spirits spring
Many a great and goodly king,
Many a man of glowing might,
Many a wise and learned wight :
And while after-days endure,
Men esteem them heroes pure.38
The expression " soon as winters eight are o'er " ( in the Greek the
numeral is nine ) , may receive some explanation from the following
suggestive interpretation of Plutarch, who in interpreting the Greek
myth, which declared that Apollo because of his slaughter of the earth
born serpent, the Python, was forced to go into exile in Thessaly for
nine years, says :
The slayer of the Python was neither banished for nine years nor yet to
Tempe. Rather, we should declare that he came as a fugitive into another world
( kosmos) and returned thence again at the expiration of nine great years or
cycles, pure and truly Phoebus-like (that is, filled with light) .30
It is therefore not necessary to accept the poet's expression as
ref erring to eight solar years of 365 days, each of 24 hours duration.
Finally at the end of the cycle of rebirth, Orphism taught that
36.
Conington's translation.
37.
Frag. 146- 147.
39. De defect, Orac., X:X:I,
p. 7Z3
38.,
Pindar (Conington's translation) .
(ed. Wyttenbach ) .
50
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
the righteous soul regained its lost inheritance. Therefore, there are
two kinds of death, for Proclus states :
After death the soul continueth to linger in the aerial body (or astral form )
till it is entirely purified from all angry and voluptuous passions . . . then doth
it put off by a Second death the aerial body, as it did the earthly one ( by the
first death ) . Whereupon the men of olden time say that there is a celestial body
always joined to the soul, which is immortal, luminous and star-like ( the Au
goeicles ) . 40
The second
death is
thus referred
to,
more
at
length, by Porphyry :
That which nature binds, nature also dissolves ; and that which the soul binds,
the soul likewise dissolves. Nature, indeed, bound the body to the soul ; but
the soul binds herself to the body. N ature, therefore, liberates the body from
the soul ; but the soul liberates herself from the body. . . . Hence there is a
twofold death ; the one, indeed universally known, in which the body is liberated
from the soul ; but the other peculiar to philosophers, in which the soul is liberated
from the body. Nor does the one entirely follow the other.41
In the elucidation of this last passage Thomas Taylor, the Platon
ist, adds :
The meaning of this twofold death is as follows. Though the body, by the
death which is universally known may be loosened from the soul, yet while mater
ial passions and affections reside in the soul, the soul will continually verge to
another body, and as long as this inclination continues, remain connected with
body. But when, from the predominance of an intellectual nature, the soul is
separated from material affections, it is truly liberated from the body ; though
the body at the same time verges and clings to the soul, as to the immediate
cause of its support.'2
In speaking of the soul's Pilgrimage, Maximus Tyrius says :
The end of this journey is not heaven, nor what it contains, but it is neces
sary to pass even beyond this, until we attain to the Supercelestial Place, the
Plain of Truth/3 and the serenity which is there,
To the fair Elysian plains,
Where the time fleets gladly, swiftly,
·where bright Rhadamanthus reigns.
Snow is not, nor rain, nor winter,
40.
Quoted by H. P. Blavatsky in Isis Unveiled, I, p. 432.
41.
Auxiliaries to the
Perception of lntelligibles, quoted by Thomas Taylor as noted in the following footnote.
42. Thomas Taylor, The Mystical Hymns of Orpheus, note 1 17, p. 162.
43. The Greek
word for Truth ( <0\'1)8e<a) , etymologi cally considered, means not to forget, and may well
have been coined under the inspiration of the Orphic teachings in regard to the Soul's
Lethe or Forgetfulness while incarcerated in generation.
STUDIES
IN
51
ORPHISM
But clear zephyrs from the west,
Singing round the streams of Ocean
Round the Islands of the Blest/�
where no corporeal passion disturbs the vision such as here disturbs man's un
happy soul and hurls her from contemplation by its uproar and tumult.45
This ultimate goal in the Inerratic Sphere, the Supercelestial Place
or the Plain of Truth ( Unforgetfulness) seems also to have been
called the Tower of Kronos, of which Pindar sings :
All whose stedfast virtue thrice
Each side the grave unchanged hath stood,
Still unseduced, unstained with vice,They by Zeus' mysterious road
Pass to Kronos' realm of rest.
Happy Isle that holds the Blest.
Where fragrant breezes, vernal airs,
Sweet children of the main,
Purge the blest island from corroding cares,
And from the bosom of each verdant plain,
Whose fertile soil immortal fruitage bears,
Trees, from whose flaming branches flow,
Arrayed in golden bloom, refulgent beams ;
And flowers of golden hue, that blow
On the fresh borders of their parent streams,
These by the Blest in solemn triumph worn
Their unpolluted heads and clustering locks adorn. '6
Although those who are completely purged at the end of a given
Life-cycle pass to the Supercelcstial Place, the Plain of Truth, above
and beyond the Cycle of Necessity, the Wheel of Rebirth, and abide
there in the impregnable Tower of Kronos on the I sle of the Blessed,
it does not appear that Orphism taught that this return of the Prodigal
to the Heavenly Homeland was final but rather seems to have con
nected it with the Greek Doctrine of the Restoration of all Things
( � a7roKaT&arncn� 7r&vnov) . I n which case the return must have been con
ceived as followed by a new Day at the commencement of which the
Great Breath is again to outbreathe a manifested universe. Such, at
least, is the Pythagorean and Stoic teaching and such doubtless was
also the Orphic.
44.
Quoted by Maximus Tyrius from Homer, Odyssey, IV,
tation on what God is According to Plato.
46.
vv.
561-568.
45.
Disser-
Third Olympian Ode, West's translation
except the first six lines.
52
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
Of great importance for a correct appreciation of the Orphic teach
ings in regard to the origin and destiny of the human soul are the
Orphic 'rablets, which consist of eight inscribed gold plates discovered
about 1 875, six in South Italian tombs near the site of ancient Sybaris,
one near Rome, and the eighth upon the island of Crete. The inscrip
tions upon these tablets, which date from the third or fourth century
n. c., consist of instructions given the soul for its guidance in its jour
ney through the afterworld, and confessions of faith which remind us
of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Fragmentary and short though
the Orphic Tablets are, they nevertheless give an epitome of the Theo
sophical teachings in regard to the Divine and the Animal in Man,
the pre-existence, rebirth, and fi n al freedom of the soul from earthly
chains under the action of the Karmic law.
The instructions on the tablets are addressed to the soul and the
speakers are the Divine Guide, who addresses the soul, the soul itself,
the holy Spring of Memory, and Persephone, and the Guardi a ns " who
strike down those who have not the password," 47
the Guardians of
whom Plutarch speaks in his treatise on the Face in the Moon : " Cer
tain Daemons ( divine Beings ) . . . are present and celebrate the
most sublime Mysteries and are punishers of evil deeds and watchers
or Guardians over such." ts
Combining the fragmentary inscriptions of the various tablets, so
far as they differ and adding the indication of the speakers, the tablets
read as follows :
-
INSTRUCTIONS GIVEN TO THE sour, BY 'l'HE DIVINE GUIDE
But as soon as thy Spirit hath left the light of the sun,
Thou shalt find on the left of the house of Hades a well-spring.
And by the side thereof standing a white cypress.
To this well-spring approach not near ( for it is the well-spring of Lethe) ,
But thou shalt find ( on the right) another by the Lake o f Memory ( the wellspring of Ennoia)
Cold water flowing forth, and there are guardians before it.
Say (to the Guardians) : " I am a child of earth and of starry Heaven :
But my race is of Heaven ( alone ) . This ye know yourselves
And lo, I am parched with thirst and I perish. Give me quickly
The cold water flowing forth from the Lake of Memory."
And of themselves they will give thee to drink of the holy well-spring,
And thereafter among the other Heroes, thou shalt have lordship.
47.
From the Interpretation of the mystical picture entitled The Path, by Mr. R. Machell,
TH it TH!lOSOPHICAX. PATH, Point Loma.
48.
XXX.
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
53
COLLOQUY I N THE AFTERWORLD BETWEEN THE SOUL, THI� SPRING,
THE GUARDIANS, AND PERSEPHONE
( Soul ) I am parched with thirst and I perish.
(Well-spring of Memory) Nay, drink of me, the Well-spring flowing forever
on the right.
( Guardians) Who art thou? Whence art thou ?
( Soul) I am a child of earth and of starry Heaven. But my race is of
Heaven ( alone) . . . .
( Persephone ) Hail, hail to thee journeying on the right . . . ( through the )
Holy meadows and groves of Phersephoneia ( Persephone-Kora, the Queen
of the Underworld) .
( Soul addresses Persephone) Out of the Pure I come, Pure Queen of the Pure
below,
Eukles and Eubouleus and the other Gods Immortal.
For I also, I avow me, am of your blessed race.
I have paid the penalty for deeds unrighteous
And Fate laid me low and the other Gods Immortal,
. . . ( with) star-flung thunderbolt.
I have passed with eager feet to the Circle Desired.
I have entered into the bosom of Despoina (or Persephone, Queen of the
UnderworId ) ,
And now I come a suppliant to Holy Phersephoneia
That of her grace she receive me to the seats of the Hallowed.
( Persephone) Hail, thou who hast suffered the Suffering. This thou hast never
suffered before
Thou art become God from Man. A kid thou art fallen into milk.
Happy and Blessed One, thou shalt be God instead of Mortal.
( Soul) A kid I have fallen into milk. 0
Much might be written by way of comment and interpretation in
regard to these tablets. The word Hades thereon evidently means the
intermediate state of the soul in the afterworld. There is an interest
ing parallel in Egyptian mythology to the Orphic sacred well-spring
of Memory, for Osiris has a " cold well of water " of which he gives
the thirsty soul to drink as is shown by the ancient formula : " May
Osiris give thee cold water." �0 The true followers of Orpheus arc
to avoid the fountain on the left with the white cypress growing near
because it is the fountain of Lethe and after a life or rather after many
lives spent in purification they must not forget if they are to be suc
cessful in reaching the Plain of Truth. Therefore in one of the Or
phic Hymns the poet prays :
49.
J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena, 2d ed., Critical Appendix, pp. 659-673 ( Murray's
translation) .
SO. Ibid., p. 575.
54
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
And in thy mystics waken Memory
0' the Holy Rite and Lethe drive afar.H
The key-sentence of the soul : " I am a child of Earth and of
Starry Heaven but my race is of Heaven alone," of course refers to
the Orphic teachings as to the dual nature of man and is an avowal
of the Divine Origin of the Higher Self. It is noteworthy that this
avowal itself constitutes the right of the soul to receive a drink from
the fountain of Remembrance - a right which is immediately recog
nized by the Guardians. To drink of the Holy well-spring is to par
take of the sacrament, the reality symbolized by the Eucharist o f Or
phic ritual.
The address of the soul to Persephone, the Queen of the Under
world, " Out of the Pure, I come, Pure Queen of the Pure Below," also
has an interesting Egyptian parallel, for in the long negative confes
sion of the soul to Osiris in the Egyptian Book of the Dead occurs the
declaration : " I am pure - I am pure - I am pure." 5 2 It means of
course I have been initiated into the true Mysteries of life and death.
The titles Eukles and Eubouleus meaning The Glorious One and
the Wise Counsellor are two of the myriad titles of Zagreus-Dionysos,
the Reborn Savior, Lord of both Death and Life. The soul's avowal,
" I have paid the penalty for deeds unrighteous and Fate laid me low
and the other Gods Immortal - ( with ) star-flung thunderbolt," refers
to the soul's suffering under the Karmic law for former sins, the taint
or " ancient woe " inherited from the earth-born Titans. The mean
ing is, Karma sank me into the material world. There is also a ref er
ence to the Zagreus myth, especially to the punishment of the Titans
by the star-flung thunderbolt hurled by Zeus.
" The sorrowful weary wheel," is the treadmill Cycle of Rebirth
without knowledge and the avowal signifies I have learned the neces
sity oI soul-purification and I remember. It is well to compare these
verses with the following statement from the Phaedo of Plato :
It is an ancient doctrine that the souls of men come Here from There and go
There again and come back Here from the Dead. 53
The expression " I have passed with eager feet to the Circle De
sired. I have entered into the bosom of Despoina," seems to be an
avowal signifying that the soul having passed beyond the Wheel of
Rebirth, the Cycle of Necessity, has attained to the Plain of Truth,
51. Hymn LXXVI I ( Harrison's translation ) .
52. J. E. Harrison, Prolegomena,
2d ed., p 588.
53. Phaedo, p. 70 c.
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
55
and thereby has mastered the meaning of both Life and Death. The
expression reminds us of the teachings of the Celtic Bards in regard
to Cylch y Gwynfyd, the Circle of Bliss.H " The Seats of the Hal
lowed " are presumably the Elysian Fields where is the " Impregnable
Tower of Kronos."
The phrase " Thou who hast suffered the suffering " seems to mean
thou who hast incarnated or incarcerated in the prison-house of the
body. " Thou art become God from man," that is, thou hast attained
to the Supercelestial Place. The words, " A Kid, thou art fallen into
milk," may be paralleled by the expression " a Lamb of God " and
appears to refer to the Orphic Eucharist or perhaps to the Orphic Bap
tism as seems rather to be suggested by the word " fallen." The sym
bology of milk used as one of the elements in the Orphic Eucharist
has been previously discussed."�
. . . IN order that one should fully comprehend individual life with its physio
logical, psychic and spiritual mysteries, he has to devote himself with all the
fervor of unselfish philanthropy and love for his brother men, to studying and
knowing collective life, or Mankind. Without preconceptions or prejudice, as
also without the least fear of possible results in one or another direction, he has
to decipher, understand and remember the deep and innermost feelings and the
aspirations of the poor people's great and suffering heart. To do this he has first
to attune his soul with that of Humanity," as the old philosophy teaches ; to
thoroughly master the correct meaning of every line and word in the rapidly
turning pages of the Book of Life of MANKIND and to be thoroughly saturated
with the truism that the latter is a whole inseparable from his own SELF.
"
. . . Theosophy alone can gradually create a mankind as harmonious and as
simple-souled as Kosmos itself ; but to effect this Theosophists have to act as
such. Having helped to awaken the spirit in many a man - we say this boldly,
challenging contradiction - shall we now stop instead of swimming with the
TIDAL WAVE ? - From " The Tidal Wave," by H. P. Blavatsky, Lucifer, V, 1 73.
54.
Script 11, p . 33, Aryan Theosophical
Vide Studies in Orphism, III, Tm: Tm:osoPHICAL PATH,
The Pith and Marrow o f Some Sacred Writings,
Press, Point
Loma, Cal.
55.
III, July 1912, pp. 50-54.
200
STUDIES IN ORPHISM: by F. S. Darrow,
VII.
(a)
A. M., Ph. D .
( Harv. )
CONCLUDI N G STUDY
THE PLANETARY SPHERES AND T H E SEVEN PRI N CIPLES
THE intimate connexion of Pythagoreanism and of Pla
tonism in their earlier as well as later forms with
Orphic thought has been previously pointed out.
1
The
same sacred knowledge, " which was fi rst mystically
and symbolically promulgated by Orpheus, \vas a fter
wards disseminated enigmatically through images by Pythagoras and
in the last place scientifically unfolded by Plato and his genuine dis
ciples."
'
So from Pythagorean wells refreshed,
The master-builder of pure intellect,
Imperial Plato, piled the palace where
All great, true thoughts have found a home forever.
3
The importance of the number seven in Orphic theology has been
previously discussed where it was shown that Orphism recognized a
sevenfold emanation of the Absolute in the Ideal \Vorld previous to
the formation of the material universe. 4 Furthermore, from the ex
positions of the Orphic teachings given by the N eoplatonists it is
evident that among the tenets was a belief in seven orders of Heavenly
Hierarchies - seven orders of Divine Beings, presiding over and per
vading the entire universe.
Usually the Hierarchies were grouped in
two triads, since the Absolute Deity, " the Thrice Unknown Dark
ness," as the primal source of all, was classed by itself.
The Noumenal
Triad belonging to the Ideal \Vorld consisted of ( a ) the N oetic or
Spiritual Powers, ( b ) the Noetic and Noeric or P sychological Powers,
and ( c ) the Noeric or Intellectual Powers.
The three Hierarchies
composing the triad of the Phenomenal world were named, ( a ) the
Encosmic or Material Powers and the two classes of invisible although
Physical Powers, denominated respectively ( b ) the Liberated or Super
celestial, and ( c ) the Supercosmic Powers.5
There is a vital connexion between the life h istory of the soul
according to Orphism and those views of astronomy which are asso
ciated with Pythagoras ; for the astronomical pilgrimage of the human
1.
Studies i1t O rphism, II, Tm� THEOSOPH ICAL PATH, II, 5, May 1912, p. 3 1 9.
2.
Thomas
Taylor : Proclus on the Theo logy of Plato, London, 1 8 1 6, I, p. ix.
3. J. S. Blackie.
4. Studies in Orphism, II, Tm: THEOSOPHICAL PATH, IT, 5, May 1912, pp. 31 8-328.
5.
Thomas Taylor :
Mystical Hymns of Orpheits, Introduction, pp. xxii-xxiv.
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
201
spirit is based upon the conception of man as a microcosm.
We read
in Simplicius :
The Pythagoreans supposing ten to be a perfect number wished to collect the
revolving heavenly bodies into a decade.
Hence they say that the Inerratic Sphere,
the seven planets, this our earth and the Autochthon, ( i. e. the Counter-earth or
" Eighth Sphere " ) , complete the decade.
6
In this connexion Orphism taught that the Immortal Self has fal
len from its native land in the Inerratic Sphere or Highest Heaven,
also " called the Plain of Truth," in which according to Plutarch,
" lie the Logoi ( or Creative Powers ) , and the molds or ideas , the
invariable models of all things which have been and which shall be ;
while about these is eternity, whence flows time as from a river ."
7
During the fall, previous to its fi rst incarnation upon earth, the Spirit
has traversed the seven Planetary Spheres. Its destiny is to return to
the Plain of Truth after it has been duly purified by means of a series
of sojourns in Hades and of rebirths upon earth.
This passage of the Spirit through the Planetary Spheres was
pictured allegorically by the so-called S even-gated Stairs in which the
various stages were· compared to stations or doors.
describing the Mysteries of Mithra a sserts :
s
Thus Celsus in
This de s c ent is designated symbolically by means of a Ladder, which is repre
sented as reaching from heaven to earth and as divided into seven stages, at the
end of each of which is a Gate; the eighth Gate is at the top of the ladder and
leads into the Inerratic Sphere. 9
H e then states that the first Gate, made of tin i s assigned to
Saturn
and then apportions the other gates among the remaining planets, de
scribing each gate in turn as composed of the metal characteristic o f
the planet i n question.
An interesting parallel is presented by Jacob's Dream :
He dreamed and behold a ladder set upo n the earth and the top of it reached
to heaven ; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it
.
.
.
and Jacob awakened out of his sleep and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place :
this is no other but the H01tse of God a:nd this is the Gate of Heaven.
10
In barest outline the teachings seem to have been as follows.
Commentary on A ristotle's Treatise de C oelo, lib. I I cf. Thomas Taylor :
The
Mysti'.cal
7. Plutarch, Why the O racles cease to Give
Answers, XXII.
8. J. A. Stewart : The Myths of Plato, Macmillan, 1905, p. 351.
9. Origen Contra Ce/sum, VI, 22.
10. Genesis xxviii, 10-19.
6.
Hymns of Orpheus, footnote pp. 156-157.
202
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
One, supreme, unapproachable and ineffable, resides in the highest
It pervades all
heaven and is itself the source of both mind and life.
things from the brightest star in mid-ether to the lowest and most
inert molecule of so-called inanimate matter.
The universe is the
Temple of the D ivine, which i s universally pervasive.
The Spirit of Man has fallen gradually from its original blessed
ness in the Inerratic Sphere, the Highest Heaven, descending through
the Gate of Cancer. In the course of its descent it has passed through
the seven Planetary Spheres where by its contact with matter it has
become transformed into soul, thereby acquiring the various faculties
which now make up the composite nature of man.
The Moon marks
the boundary between the eternal and the perishable, for everything
below the Moon is mortal except, indeed, the Celestial Traveler, the
Higher Self which in the future will retraverse the Planetary Spheres
and mount the stages of the Celestial Stairs by ascending through
the
Gate of Capricorn.
These ideas are unfolded at some length in Porphyry's Treatise
on the
Cave of the
taken :
Nyniphs from which the following quotations are
Since Cancer is nearest to us, it is very properly attributed to the Moon, which
is the nearest of all the heavenly bodies to the earth.
But as the southern pole,
by its great distance, is invisible to us, hence Capricorn is attributed to Saturn ;
the highest and most remote of all the planets.
Again, the signs from Cancer
to Capricorn, are situated in the following order : and the first of these is Leo,
which is the house of the Sun ; afterwards Virgo, which is the house of Mercury ;
Libra, the house of Venus ; Scorpio, of Mars ; Sagittarius, of Jupiter ; and Capri
cornus, of Saturn.
But from Capricorn in an inverse order, Aquarius is attri
buted to Saturn ; Pisces, to Jupiter ; Aries, to l\far s ; Taurus, to Venus ; Gemini,
to Mercury ; and , in the last place, Cancer to the Moon.
Theologists therefore assert, that these two gates are Cancer and Capricorn ;
but Plato calls them entrances.
And of these, theologists say, that Cancer is the
gate through which souls descend ; but Capricorn that through which they ascend.
Cancer is indeed northern, and adapted to descent ; but Capricorn is southern
and adapted to ascent.
into generation.
The northern parts, likewise, pertain to souls descending
And the gates of the cavern which are turned to the north, are
rightly said to be pervious to the descent of men ; but the southern gates are not
the avenues of the Gods, but of souls ascending to the Gods.
On this account,
the poet ( i. e. Homer ) does not say that they are the avenues of the Gods, but
of immortals ; this appellation being also common to our souls, which are per se,
immortal.
11
1 1.
Porphyry, Cave of the Nymphs, 10- 1 1 .
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
203
The Orphic terminology for the Seven Principles of man's nature,
the principles which were gradually acquired by the Spirit as a result
of its descent through the Planetary Spheres, seems to have been a s
follows.
The highest principle, the Noetic or Spiritual Soul in leav
ing the Inerratic Sphere is first clothed with the Luminous Vehicle,
known as the Augoeides.
Later on Saturn the Spirit acquired its
Theoretic or Contemplative functions, which seem to correspond in
modern Theosophical terminology to Manas in some of its aspects.
On Jupiter the so-called Political or Social Soul was added, appar
ently representing other aspects of Manas ; while on Mars and on
Venus were acquired the Spirited and Acquisitional elements, the
Passions and Desires called respectively in the Orphic system the
Tbymetic and Epithymetic elements . From the Sun and from l\'1er
cury were gathered the elements of the Life Principle referred to as
the Sensitive and the Hermeneutic element. Lastly from the Moon
came the vegetative or Astral Body and from the Earth the Physical
B ody.
Thus Macrobius states :
The Spirit, therefore, falling from the Zodiac and the Milky Way into each
of the Planetary Spheres . . . is not only clothed with the Luminous Body, the
Augoeides, but also develops during its passage through the spheres the different
faculties which it is to exercise ( during incarnation on earth ) .
Thus it acquires in
the Sphere of Saturn the Reasoning Power and the Intelligence or the Theoretic
and Contemplative element ; in that of Jupiter the power of acting and of organ
ization or the Social element ; in that o f the Sun the power of feeling and of believ
ing, or the Sensitive and Imaginative element ;
in that of Venus the Principle
of Desire, or the Epithymetic element ; in the Sphere of Mercury the power o f
expressing and interpreting sensation or the Hermeneutic element ; finally upon
entering the Sphere of the Moon it acquires the necessary faculty of forming and
developing bodies.
This lunar sphere, although from the standpoint o f the divine
the lowest, is the first and highest from the standpoint of the earthly, and the
Lunar Body although it is the sediment of Celestial Matter is nevertheless the
purest form of animal matter.
12
The testimony of Proclus is similar :
If you will take it, of the beneficent planets, the Moon is the cause to men o f
nature, being herself the visible image o f primitive nature.
The S u n is the creator
of everything having the power of sensation in consequence of being the cause
of sight and visibility.
Mercury is the cause of the motions of phantasy, but o f
the imaginative essence itself so f a r as sense and phantasy a r e one, the S u n i s
the producing cause.
12.
Venus is the cause of the Epithymetic appetites and Mars
Commentary on Cicero's Somnium Scipionis, I, 12.
204
THE
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
of the passionate motions which are conformable to nature.
powers Jupiter is
powers, Saturn.
13
Of all the vital
the common cause ; but of all intellectual ( or rather spiritual)
(b)
CON CLU SION
Our survey of Orphism has now been completed - a survey made
for the express purpose of serving as a partial illustration and com
mentary upon the following statement of H. P. Blavatsky :
Underlying every ancient popular religion was the same ancient Vv'isdom
doctrine, one and identical, professed and preached by the initiates of every coun
try, who alone were aware of its existence and importance.
14
The identity of the Theosophical teachings throughout the ages
wa s as clearly perceived in antiquity as in modern times by those who
had eyes to see. This is evident for example from the following ana
thema which was hurled by the early Christian ecclesiastics against
the ancient Manichaeans :
I anathematize the Book of Aristocritus which he names Theosophy, wherein
he attempts to show that Judaism, Hellenism, Christianity and 11anichaeism are
one and the same do ctrine
.
15
S imilarly we learn from Photius that an anonymous writer of
Constantinople composed in the seventh century a synthesis of the
Theosophical teachings of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Chal
daeans , the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans wherein he showed
their essential agreement with Christianity.
16
S ince Orpheus was reputed to be the religious teacher from whom
the Greeks derived their Mystery teachings - the author of their
knowledge of art and of science as well as of religion, it is not sur
prising that even a casual glance is sufficient to reveal the identity
between Orphism and the primeval v\Tisdom-Religion, as disclosed
to the modern world in the teachings of the three Theosophical Lead
ers. A similar study of such philosophical and religious systems as
the Jewish Kabala would likewise result in a full verification of the
above statement quoted from H. P. Blavatsky. Surely, the day can
not be far distant when this will not only be privately acknowledged
but also publicly proclaimed by all serious students of human history.
13. Commen tary on the Timaeus, p . 260.
14. Isis Unveiled, II, p. 99.
15. Cotlerius ad Clement. Recog., V, 544, quoted in Lobeck : Aglaophamus, Regimon tii Prussornm,
1829, p. 346.
16. CLXX, 197 quoted in Lobeck ibid.
STUDIES
IN
ORPHISM
205
Although professedly merely a partial survey of the Greek Mys
tery teachings has been attempted, i t seems necessary before closing
to sound a note of warning.
As in modern times the true Theosophical
teachings have been perverted and travestied by persons who have
dared to use the sacred word Theosophy as a cloak for their own
selfish interests, so undoubtedly in ancient times the true teachings
of Orpheus were befouled and bespattered by cranks and mountebanks.
If desired, thi s could be easily proved by quoting from the page� of
Plato who is the severest castigator of the pseudo-Orphism because of
the very fact that he was himself a
true
follower of Orpheus.
Thor
oughly conscious of the existence of the counter feit and the false in
both ancient and modern times, it has been the aim of these studies to
outline only the teachings of true Orphism in so far as those teachings
can be gleaned from the extant ancient sources. Under the guidance
of the modern Theosophical teachings an attempt has been made to
point out some of the secrets of the Greek Mysteries - secrets, which
have been so carefully preserved, free from harm throughout the ages.
There are, of course, many other secrets which can be discovered
by the student who shall push on his res earches under the guidance of
that master-key of Theosophical teaching, Th e Secret Doctrine of H.
P. B lavatsky.
The testimony of the great and the good throughout all antiquity
attests with wonder ful unanimity the nobility of the ancient Mysteries
and the bliss of the Initiates. 17
In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the poet declares :
Blessed is he among man who is given these rites to know. 18
Pindar s ings :
Happy who these rites hath kenned
Ere beneath the ground he gocth,
Well he knoweth of life's end ;
Well its God-given source he knoweth. 1 9
Plato states :
Whoever goes uninitiated to Hades will lie in mud, but he who has been
purified and is fully initiate, when he goes thither, will dwell with the gods.
20
I socrates, the orator, in speaking of the Goddess Demeter says :
1 7.
18.
v.
Studies in Orphism, I I I, THE THEOSOPHJCAL PATH, nr, l, July 1912, pp. 45-56.
19. Threnoi, frag. 137 Bergk, Conington's translation.
20. Phaedo, 69
480.
c.
THE
206
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
She gave us two most excellent gifts : the fruits of the field that we might
not live like beasts and the rites of initiation that the Mystics might have a sweeter
hope both as regards the close of life and as regards all eternity.21
Similarly upon the tombstone of an ancient Mystic of Eleusis we
can still read verses to the following effect :
In truth a noble secret
The Gods in th' Mysteries proclaim :
Mortality is not a curse
But a blessing all happy is death.
And Plutarch explains in a passage reminiscent of Plato :
To die is to be initiated into the great mysteries. . . .
It is there that man,
having become perfect through his initiation, restored to liberty, really master of
himself, celebrates, crowned with myrtle, the most august mysteries, holds con
verse with just and pure souls, and perceives with pity the impure multitude of
the profane or uninitiated ever plunged or rather sinking of themselves into the
mist and the profound darkness.
In
The Frogs of
Aristophanes the Chorus sing :
0, happy, mystic chorus,
The blessed sunshine o ' er u s
O n u s alone is shining
In its soft sweet light !
On us who strive forever
With holy, pure endeavor,
Alike by friend and stranger,
To guide our steps aright. 22
In The B ac ch ae of Euripides the poet thus describes the bliss of
initiation :
0, happy to whom is the blessedness given
To be taught in the Mysteries sent from heaven,
Who is pure in his life, through whose soul the unsleeping
Pleasure goes sweeping.23
Oh, blessed he in all wise,
Who hath drunk the Living Fountain,
Whose life no folly staineth,
And his soul is near to God ;
Whose sins are lifted, pall-wise,
As he worships on the mountain.
21.
24
22. vv 455-459, Roger's translation.
23. v v 72-75, Way's
translation.
24. vv 72-75, Murray's translation.
Panegyr., 28.
STUDIES
IN
207
ORPHISM
In antiquity as well as in modern times the aspirants seeking the
sacred knowledge of Theosophy were warned that the " Path " was no
primrose-strewn pleasure promenade.
This is shown by the following
Oracle from Apollo at Delphi which has come down to us :
A road there is, and a road it is of the Blessed Gods,
And by those whom the Gods love will that road be trodden
-
A road of many pathways, pathways marvelous past utterance,
But all alike of them upward climbing, and all alike of them
Rough with many a ruggedness, and all o f them asking endlessly,
Of those who tread them, toiler's action and toiler's achievement,
And where at the first this road opens itself out, at the forefront of it
Stands a portal not light and airy, as though it led easily
To some pleasance of liking and luxuriousness, but massive and frowning,
Barred and banded with brass, grim and unyielding.
25
In the course of our study we have tried to distinguish between the
mythical and the historical Orpheus, the magical bard of poetical
legend and the early religious reformer of the Greek Mysteries.
We
have also seen that Orphism taught religious verities identically simi
lar to those today promulgated by the modern Theosophical Leaders,
H. P. Blavatsky, W. Q. Judge, and Katherine Tingley - the funda
mentals of the Wisdom-Religion.
Furthermore, it was shown that
the teachings in regard to the Cosmos and in regard to M an present
many very striking analogies because of the parallelism which exists
between the M acrocosm and the Microcosm.
An exposition was also
given of the Greek teachings in regard to the two worlds or diacosms,
the material or phenomenal world and the immaterial or noumenal
world, which were evolved by emanation from the Absolute Deity,
" the Thrice Unknown Darkness," in accordance with a sevenfold
plan of evolution.
This gave rise not only to the seven Heavenly Hier
archies but also to the Seven Principles in Man.
The characteristic
features of the typical Greek mystery drama, the Zagreus-myth, were
also examined by the help of statements made in The Secret Doctrine
of H. P. Blavatsky, reinforced by many quotations from the Classical
authors. Lastly, one entire study, ( No. V I ) was devoted to the con
sideration of the Orphic teachings in regard to the origin and destiny
of the human soul.
It is worth noting that the two periods within historic times in
which Orphism was especially active, namely the sixth century
25.
Eusebius, Prep. Evang., ix, 1, Canon Harper's translation.
B. c . ,
THE
208
THEOSOPHICAL
PATH
and the beginning of the Christian era, are, religiously speaking, two
of the most important epochs now known.
The sixth century
B . c.
seems to have been a period of a great spiritual awakening for it gave
birth to Pythagoras and Epimenides in Greece, to Jeremiah and Eze
kiel in Israel, to Confucius in China, and to Gautama in India.
The secrecy of the teachings of the Mysteries was most carefully
guarded until the beginning of the present era. Thus St. Clement of
Alexandria says :
Those who instituted the 1f ysteries, being philosophers, buried their teach
ings in myths so as not to be obvious to all.
2�
And again :
Hipparchus, the Pythagorean was expelled from the school because he was
guilty of writing down the teachings o f Pythagoras in plain language and a tomb
stone was erected for him as if he had died. 2 7
Beginning, however, with the Neoplatonic school of Plotinus and
his successors in the third, fourth and fifth centuries of our era, many
of the primeval teachings were expounded more openly.
Therefore
the Neoplatonists today are among the most important sources of our
knowledge of Orphism but this is in itself no indication whatsoever
that the teachings in question are of a comparatively recent origin
although some hasty modern scholars have dogmatically and illogically
affirmed it to be so.
The ancients themselves knew the true situation
far better that these pseudo-savants. Therefore, antiquity itself i s
persistent and unanimous i n declaring the Mysteries t o be " \Visdom
old as time."
28
LAY up the only treasure ; do good deeds ; practise sobriety and self-control ;
amass that wealth which thieves cannot abstract, nor tyrants seize, which follows
thee at death, which never wastes away nor is corrupted.
This is the sum of all true righteousness : treat others as thou wouldst thyself
be treated.
Do nothing to thy neighbor which hereafter thon wouldst not have
thy neighbor do to thee.
26.
Strom,
v
9.
27.
-
Ibid.
Mahabhdrata
28.
Stu dies in Orphism, I I I, Tm<: Tm:osoPHICAL PATH,
III, 1, July 1912, p. 52.