sdi

τόσσον ἔνερθ᾽ ὑπὸ γῆς, ὅσον οὐρανός ἐστ᾽ ἀπὸ γαίης:
τόσσον γάρ τ᾽ ἀπὸ γῆς ἐς Τάρταρον ἠερόεντα.
ἐννέα γὰρ νύκτας τε καὶ ἤματα χάλκεος ἄκμων
οὐρανόθεν κατιὼν δεκάτῃ κ᾽ ἐς γαῖαν ἵκοιτο:
ἐννέα δ᾽ αὖ νύκτας τε καὶ ἤματα χάλκεος ἄκμων
ἐκ γαίης κατιὼν δεκάτῃ κ᾽ ἐς Τάρταρον ἵκοι.
τὸν πέρι χάλκεον ἕρκος ἐλήλαται: ἀμφὶ δέ μιν νὺξ
τριστοιχεὶ κέχυται περὶ δειρήν: αὐτὰρ ὕπερθεν
γῆς ῥίζαι πεφύασι καὶ ἀτρυγέτοιο θαλάσσης.

as far beneath the earth as heaven is above it,
that is how far it is from earth to Tartaros:
since a bronze anvil falling from heaven to earth
for nine days and nights would land on the tenth,
and a bronze anvil falling from earth to Tartaros
for nine days and nights would land on the tenth.
Around it runs a bronze fence, beyond which night
pours in three rows like a collar, while above it
grow the roots of earth and the barren sea.

(Hesiod, Theogony 720–8, as translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly. Note that the translation is, alas, not line-for-line due to word order considerations.)

ἤ μιν ἑλὼν ῥίψω ἐς Τάρταρον ἠερόεντα
τῆλε μάλ’, ἧχι βάθιστον ὑπὸ χθονός ἐστι βέρεθρον,
ἔνθα σιδήρειαί τε πύλαι καὶ χάλκεος οὐδός,
τόσσον ἔνερθ’ Ἀΐδεω ὅσον οὐρανός ἐστ’ ἀπὸ γαίης:

or I will pick him up and throw him into murky Tartaros
very far away, where the deepest abyss lies under the earth,
surrounded by iron gates and a border of bronze,
as far beneath Hades as heaven is above the earth;

(Zeus speaking. Iliad VIII 13–16, as translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly.)

Ἔστι μὲν οὖν ἡ πορεία διττὴ πᾶσιν ἢ ἀναβαίνουσιν ἢ ἄνω ἐλθοῦσιν· ἡ μὲν γὰρ προτέρα ἀπὸ τῶν κάτω, ἡ δέ γε δευτέρα, οἷς ἤδη ἐν τῷ νοητῶ γενομένοις καὶ οἷον ἴχνος θεῖσιν ἐκεῖ πορεύεσθαι ἀνάγκη, ἕως ἂν εἰς τὸ ἐσχατον τοῦ τόπου ἀφίκωνται, ὃ δὴ τέλος τῆς πορείας ὂν τυγχάνει, ὅταν τις ἐπ' ἄκρῳ γένηται τῷ νοητῷ.

There are two stages of the journey for all, one when they are going up and one when they have arrived above. The first leads from the regions below, the second is for those who are already in the intelligible realm and have gained their footing There, but must still travel till they reach the furthest point of the region; that is the "end of the journey," when you reach the top of the intelligible.

(Plotinus, Enneads I iii "On Dialectic" §1, as translated by A. H. Armstrong.)

The poets describe three worlds: heaven, earth, and Tartaros. We see three worlds in the mysteries, too; heroes always descend twice and reascend twice:

• Osiris is stuffed in a box, then dismembered; in early versions of the Horos-myth (e.g. Shabaka Stone 7–9; cf. Pyramid Texts 770b?, 2099a?), Horos wins the trial to reclaim Lower Egypt, then defeats Seth to reclaim Upper Egypt.
• Perseus is exiled from Argos to Seriphos, and is sent from Seriphos to the ends of the earth; he returns to Seriphos with the Gorgon's head, and returns to Argos as king.
• Persephone is kidnapped from Nusa, then fed the pomegranate seeds to bind her to Hades.
• Hesiod (Theogony 793–804) says that souls which perjure their oaths to the Stux suffer two punishments: they lie comatose for a year, then they are exiled for nine.
• Odusseus returns from Troia aimlessly in his own ship, then directly in the ships of others.
• Zephyr carries Psyche to Eros's palace, the river carries Psyche to earth; as penances, Psyche wanders the earth aimlessly, then Psyche completes tasks for Venus.
• Plotinus says that there are two stages in everyone's upward journey: the ascent from the lower world, and the traversal of the upper world to its highest point.

Therefore I think the poets' "heaven" is the Intellect; "earth" is the world of Soul, the abode of angels and purified souls; and "Tartaros" is our material world, the haunt of daimons and men and beasts, a dark prison surrounded by walls of bronze and gates of iron. Indeed, Homer's shades are insensate because most of us, the inhabitants of Hades, are passive, sheep-like. Teiresias alone among them has his wits because, by the gift of Persephone (that is to say, having mastered the mysteries), he is awake to his seven lives (his reincarnations) and has learned from them, becoming a purified soul, a saint, a hero; he sits in Hades merely waiting for his sentence to be commuted.

So, the heroes' two falls are the emanation from the Intellect and the fall into matter; their two returns are their waking up from the material world (which is relatively brief, if one makes the effort, but very unpleasant) and their efforts to master of the spiritual world (which takes long ages of time but is nicer).

But this also explains another thing that's always bothered me. After Zeus deposes Kronos, he and his brothers share power amongst themselves: Zeus became king of heaven; Poseidon, king of the sea; and Hades, king of the underworld. Since I've mostly followed the four-fold Empedoclean model, the three divisions confused me. The poets' model, however, fits it nicely: Zeus ruling (and being) the Intellect, Poseidon ruling the spiritual world (being Soul), and Hades ruling the material world (being Nature). This explains their traditional attributes, with Zeus being the strongest (because the Intellect has power over all existence), Poseidon being a shapeshifter (because spiritual things are without form), and Hades being wealthy (containing all material things); further, the gifts of the Circle-Eyes are the representation of an individual each at each level: Zeus's lightning-bolts represent the ideas held within the Intellect (hence is a symbol of intuition), Poseidon's trident represents the souls held within Soul (hence is a symbol of reason—a trident grabs a fish much better than a spear, just like reason helps us hold onto intuitive insights—and is, perhaps, why Plato insisted on a tripartite soul), and Hades's dogskin represents the bodies held within Nature (hence is a symbol of sensation and is why Apollodoros says that "it allows one to see while not being seen," a riddling way of describing how a body grants sense-perception while also hiding the soul). This last amuses me: what is a body, after all, but a beast skin wrapped around the soul?

At Eleusis, there were two sets of mystery festivals: the Lesser Mysteries (which occurred around the spring equinox) and the Greater Mysteries (which occurred around the autumn equinox). It is the latter of these that are mythically recorded in part as the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (and which I talked about as the Mystery of Isis). Thomas Taylor (Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries I) says that "the Lesser Mysteries occultly signified the miseries of the soul while in subjection to the body, so those of the Greater obscurely intimated, by mystic and splendid visions, the felicity of the soul both here and hereafter, when purified from the defilements of a material nature and constantly elevated to the realities of intellectual vision."

That is probably all historically factual; but be that as it may, I think the distinction is mistaken. The Mysteries of Isis/Demeter aren't the true Greater Mysteries; neither are those of Osiris/Dionusos or even those of Horos/Apollo. All of these are Lesser Mysteries in the sense that they are preparatory; learning to reflect upon them and discern what they mean is meant to give you the tools to unpack the Greater Mysteries.

Even if the Lesser Mysteries should not be spoken of—and this is for good reason; those of you who have been following my Horos series have been taking them with salt, right?—it is possible to speak of them. The Greater Mysteries are those which cannot be spoken of even in theory: these are the mysteries of your soul itself, that which is strictly internal to you. Only you can experience that myth and explore that terrain, therefore only you can master those mysteries.

Hearing the Lesser Mysteries makes you an apprentice. Mastering the Lesser Mysteries means you know how to use the tools of the mysteries; in a sense, you become a journeyman, capable of work but not yet having constructed a masterpiece. Mastering the Greater Mysteries is constructing your masterpiece, and that masterpiece is your Soul.

Having mastered them, you as Kassandra are both blessed with Illumination and cursed with being unable to communicate it. Still, one should have the good hope of joining the ranks of those who, too, have Seen...

𓎬 𓊽 𓋹

When I revisited the Horus myth in light of discovering what Plutarch censored from it, I had neglected to revisit the sacred talismans of the mysteries, but I think what was omitted from the trial makes it clear what's going on with them.

Each of these objects represent, I think, a token from a critical scene in the mysteries themselves. The tyet knot is Isis's girdle, which she removes when she cuts her hair and puts on garments of mourning—I presume she gives the girdle to the initiate watching the mysteries, or perhaps a miniature version is given them in reminiscence of it. The djed pillar is the stalk of heather in which Osiris was imprisoned, which was perfumed and wrapped in linen and given to Malkander and Astarte—I presume a normal-sized heather stalk wrapped in linen is given to initiates at that point in the mysteries.

But what about the ankh?

Well, the tyet is intentionally soft—not only is it a garment, but it is also representative of feminine matter, which receives and is changed by receiving. The djed is intentionally hard—not only is it a structural element in the story, but it is also representative of masculine spirit, which gives and is unchanged by giving. But these are just the same as the parts of Horus mentioned in the trial: his Isaic part is his soft tissue, his flesh, while his Osirian part is his structure, his bones. By defeating Set he legitimized himself to his father, but by beheading Isis he delegitimized himself from his mother, and so the council of gods gave him the kingdom but took away his flesh. This is saying that when the soul no longer has need of a material crutch, the nature of the cosmos is that they ascend to an unembodied life.

But this is just what we see in the ankh, which writers from antiquity on all agree is representative of "eternal life," and which is expressed in the object itself: it's hard and structural like the djed—presumably initiates were given one made of reed or something—but it has the shape of the tyet knot. This is indicating spirit shaped by matter, which is just what the ascended soul is when divested of its material part: a living idea given its peculiar form through its exile in the world.

So I wonder if the ankh talisman was given to initiates as a part of the trial scene, as a symbol of Horus and a reminder that "eternal life" isn't a gift or an inevitability, but something to be hard-won through the contemplation of the mysteries and the development of one's own, personal meaning from them.

This post is a bit of a revision to my exploration of the myth of Horus: in the month since then, I found a few lost bits and pieces of the Horus myth, and my interpretation of it has evolved a little bit. I think it also agrees even more closely with the Odysseus story than it did before, and it is easier to confidently associate characters and events between the two:

The left column is taken from Plutarch, Isis and Osiris XIX, but I have amended it (sometimes a little speculatively) with the italicized sections as follows:

• 2. Diodorus Siculus (Library of History I lxxxviii) says that Osiris came to Horus "in the form of a wolf," which most likely refers to 𓃢𓏃𓏠𓅂 Khenti-Amentiu "Foremost of the Westerners," who was jackal-headed (woof woof) and equated with Osiris (J. Gwyn Griffiths, The Conflict of Horus and Seth IV ii). The confusion of canids isn't anything to wonder at: Lycopolis ("City of Wolves") was consecrated to Anubis and Wepwawet, both jackals.

• 5. Set turning into a red bull is attested in the Pyramid Texts (418a, 679d, 1543a–1550a, 1977b) and apparently is a commonplace of later Egyptian myth (Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde XLVIII p. 72), though I have not found direct references. The loss of Horus's eye and Set's testicles is attested in the Pyramid Texts (418a, 594a, 679d), and also of course suggested by their restoration (see [8]).

• 6–7. Plutarch censors this episode in Isis and Osiris XIX, but says Isis was beheaded immediately after in XX, and this is confirmed in the Papyrus Sallier IV. I have retained Horus taking Isis's crown and therefore claiming kingship, since otherwise Set would have no reason for taking him to court.

• 8–10. I had mistakenly thought that Set took Horus to court over the legitimacy of his rule, but I was incorrect: it is over the legitimacy of his birth (Greek νοθεία notheia, "birth out of wedlock"). Plutarch censors this episode in Isis and Osiris XIX, but references the uncensored version in Desire and Grief VI and On the Generation of the Soul in the Timæus XXVII, and this is confirmed in the Papyrus Jumilhac. These vary in what parts, specifically, are assigned to the mother and father, but in any case the mother's part is always the outward part (skin, fat, flesh), and the father's part is always the inward part (blood, bones, marrow). The restoration of Horus's eye and Set's testicles is mentioned in the Pyramid Texts (36a, 39a, 65b, 95c, 535a–b, 578d, 591b, 595a–596c, 946a–c, 1614b). There is another version of the trial in The Contendings of Horus and Seth (Papyrus Chester Beatty I), but it conflicts with Plutarch's version of the myth (for example, Thoth is created from Horus "impregnating" Set, rather than pre-existing), and so I consider it a parallel tradition.

• 12. Horus displacing Set to become undisputed king is implied by Turin King List; Herodotus, Histories II cxliv; Manetho, History of Egypt; Diodorus Siculus, Library of History I xxv; etc. The reconciliation between Horus and Set is suggested by the Pyramid Texts (390b, 678a–c, 801b–c, 971a–b, 975a–b, 1453b, 2100a–b), but Diodorus Siculus (Library of History I xxi) says that Set was executed (but his version of the myth differs in a number of other ways, too, so it is less trustworthy).

I think I can fairly confidently say, now, that Odysseus is Horus's bones, Circe is Tewaret, Hermes and Athena are Thoth (who is always the advisor to the king, whether he be Ra, Osiris, Isis, or Horus), Teiresias is Khenti-Amentiu (the avatar of Osiris), the monsters following Circe are the serpent chasing Tewaret, Helios is Set as a red bull (and the cows are his testicles), Calypso is Isis, Odysseus's various ships (his original one, the raft, and the Phæacian ship) are Horus's flesh, and Poseidon is Set.

I had hurried past Osiris's questions to Horus, as I was unsure what to make of them. J. Gwyn Griffiths (The Conflict of Horus and Seth IV iii) suggests that the first question is meant to demonstrate Horus's piety and the second is meant to demonstrate his intelligence, which is no less reasonable than my supposition of blood-thirstiness.

The main change from my prior analysis is that the stripping of Horus's material part makes it obvious that Horus triumphs over matter in the first battle, not the second, as I had previously thought. In a way, this makes more sense: it means that the battles with Set are not the mastery of the virtues, but the climbing of the levels of the tetractys (that is, the reverse process of the birth of the gods): one transcends Earth and Water together, then transcends Air, and finally all becomes one again at the end of time. So we can therefore associate mastery of the civic virtues (e.g. separating men from beasts) with defeating Circe (who does not turn Odysseus's men into pigs, but rather makes their outward form reflect their inward form); similarly, the mastery of the purificatory virtues (e.g. transcending desire) can be associated with defeating Calypso (who appeals to Odysseus's sensual desires, and yet he spends all his time on the shore, longing for home).

That it is only the Osirian part of Horus that becomes king of Egypt is supportive of my hypothesis that Horus the Elder is the seed of the individual soul within Osiris when he is born of Nut. It is also strongly suggestive of the principle that all things return to their source: Fire to Fire, and Earth to Earth. To my recollection, Empedocles never mentions such a principle, though Plutarch does (On the Man in the Moon XXX), albeit in different terms.

In the version of the trial included in The Contendings of Horus and Seth, Horus "impregnates" Set and Thoth pops out of Set's forehead as a result, which is awfully reminiscent of the Athena myth and also agrees with my prior argument that Hermes is Odysseus's intelligence while Athena is Odysseus's wisdom.

Previously I said that the White Goddess was like those daimons who speed the rising soul on their way, but I think this is incorrect: if that's so, why does she remain in the sea, and why does Odysseus throw back her veil? No, I think the White Goddess is the mysteries themselves (appropriate, for the daughter of Cadmus!) and her veil is the mystery teachings; Odysseus makes use of them during his three-day-and-night-swim (that is, Plato's "three philosophical lives"), and he returns the veil because, as the Buddha remarks in his Parable of the Raft, teachings are for crossing over but not for holding on to: once one has transcended the material world, the teachings are simply no longer relevant.

I hadn't paid any attention to the sacrifice of the three animals to Poseidon at the end of the Odyssey. I wonder if these three are recapitulations of the three battles: that is, they express the reason why this is all the way it is. We are living offerings to divinity: the experiences we have, the teachings we learn, the states of consciousness we enter as we individuate and climb the latter of being: all of these are what we bring back to the Source at the end of time. We are god coming to know itself: one ram, one bull, one boar at a time.

I've been thinking about what the purpose and value of the mysteries are, and I think what I've come to appreciate most about all this is that it provides such a lovely map of mystical experience: one can confidently say "oh, this is where I am!" and it gives guidance on what you're dealing with and what you can expect to deal with next. At least the little bit I have memory and experience of seems to fit, anyway, and I have good hopes for what comes after.

ἠδ᾽ Ἔρος, ὃς κάλλιστος ἐν ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσι,
λυσιμελής, πάντων δὲ θεῶν πάντων τ᾽ ἀνθρώπων
δάμναται ἐν στήθεσσι νόον καὶ ἐπίφρονα βουλήν.

and Love, who is the most beautiful of the deathless gods,
who relaxes the limbs; of every gods' and mortals'
hearts, minds, and careful plans, he conquers.

(Hesiod, Theogony 120–2, as translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly.)

κάλλιστος is a tricky word, here; it is generally translated "most beautiful," but my dictionary seems to give the sense of "most good" in general—most good in form (hence "most beautiful"), most good in disposition ("kindliest"), most good in worthiness ("noblest"), etc. I'm not really sure in which sense it is meant, if indeed those of Hesiod's day would have distinguished them at all. Plotinus, at least, considered all superlatives (beauty, truth, etc.) to coincide in the Intellect.

I fear making sense of this is beyond my present capacities, but that doesn't make it any less worthy of a topic for meditation. Similarly, it is worth considering why Hesiod and Empedocles place Love at the top of their hierarchies, above even kingly Zeus.

You have four parts to your being: the Fiery consciousness that infuses all, an Airy soul, a Watery imagination, and an Earthy body. I sometimes often almost exclusively like to talk about guardian angels, but the Neoplatonists didn't consider you to have just one of these: rather, each part of your being has a guide set over it, and the one you interact with is of the degree immediately higher than whatever part of your being consciousness reflects off of.

When you are focused on your body, your goal is to master the civic virtues, and in this you are aided by the natal daimon, a being of Water who is set over the body, tending it and keeping it whole. Since this being is set over your body, it only persists with the body for the length of a single life; this is the daimon which Socrates (quoting Er) talks about in the Republic as going with a person when they enter into life, and it's the being which astrological mechanisms relate to and identify.

When you are focused on your imagination, your goal is to master the cathartic virtues, and in this you are aided by the guardian angel, a being of Air who is set over the imagination. This being is immortal and persists with a soul through all its incarnations, shepherding it back up to the spiritual world. Few people, it seems, energize at the level of Water, and this is why the Egyptian priest found it remarkable that Plotinus's guiding spirit was a god and not a mere daimon.

When you are focused on your soul, only one being remains above you, and that is Fire itself: so heroes (those of us who no longer require bodies but live in the spiritual world) no longer have a guardian angel, but are guided by God (which is why Proclus says, "as souls we are dependent upon the Intellect alone, but as souls using a body we are in need of the guardian spirit").

What happens to those guiding spirits as we ascend the ranks? As beings of Water, natal daimons aren't immortal; they outlive the body they tend, but not indefinitely, and I presume it is they who meet us after death and help us to process our life's experiences. Guardian angels, on the other hand, are immortal and persist indefinitely: I presume that even if they aren't our guardians any more in the spiritual world, that they help us acclimate to that world when we first return there, and after that remain our good and close friends.

I have been wondering about this in the context of the Odyssey. As I have said, if Odusseus is the individual soul in the process of reascent, then Ogugia is the limit of the world of Earth, Skheria is the limit of the world of Water, and Ithake is "home," the world of Air. It is noteworthy that Hermes aids Odusseus on Aiaia (giving him moly to protect him from Kirke) and on Ogugia (conveying Zeus's will that Kalupso release Odusseus), but thereafter he is aided by Athenaie (advising him on Skheria, helping him to reclaim his house on Ithake). So in that sense, Hermes acts like Odusseus's natal daimon, while Athenaie acts like Odusseus's guardian angel.

(It is amusing to me that these two deities are the two Olumpians which are described as children. Athenaie in particular is not often depicted this way in modern times, but that is exactly what "Pallas" means: "pre-pubescent girl." Presumably their depiction as children reflects their minor status as compared to other daimons or angels (or gods, like Zeus and Demeter). Certainly, Athenaie's fiery outbursts at Zeus make more sense when she's seen in this way—"daddy, you don't even care about Odusseus!" as she stomps her feet—and I would love to see people draw Athenaie as swimming in an aigis much, much too big for her!)

Manetho (Epitome of Physical Doctrines) and Diodorus Siculus (Library of History I xi) tell us that the Egyptian priests learned the myth of Isis and Osiris by careful observation of the Sun and Moon. That the myth refers to the month is also, of course, suggested by Thoth stealing the Moon's light to enable the "birth" of the gods. I had completely ignored that interpretation before, since I wanted to focus on Empedocles, but I thought it might be instructive to spend a little while on it.

We will start by following Manetho and Diodorus by assuming that the Sun is Osiris and the Moon is Isis. Plutarch adds (in his fourth explanation of the myth, Isis and Osiris XLIV) that Set is the eclipse and the fourteen pieces in which Osiris was divided are the fourteen days of the waning Moon. Now, the lunar month is twenty-nine-and-a-half days long, and we know that Egypt rounded it off to a 30-day civil month, and that it began once the Moon was no longer visible to the eye, which occurs approximately a day prior to the astronomical New Moon that we now use. This should give us enough to go on, and I've made a chart of the Moon's phases over the course of the month as an aid to following the touch points between the myth and the month (read it counter-clockwise from the top):

1. On the first day of the month, the Sun (Osiris) shines but the Moon (Isis) is invisible. If we regard Osiris as the soul and Isis as the body, then this is the golden age, where Osiris reigns in Egypt and the soul is pure and has no need of a body.

2. On the second day of the month, the astronomical New Moon occurs. It is possible on such days for a solar eclipse to occur, and this would fit the part of the myth where Set kills Osiris and hides him in a box (e.g. the Sun is obscured).

3. On the third day of the month, the Moon is still not yet visible. This is when Osiris's box floats down the Nile, and when Pan and the Satyrs see it and notify Isis. After this, for the remaining of the first half of the month, the Moon waxes and Isis wanders as a fugitive.

16. On the sixteenth day of the month, Isis finally recovers Osiris, which represents the Moon going full (which occurs approximately a day before the astronomical Full Moon), which is when the Moon reflects the Sun as perfectly as it is capable of and the full descent of soul into body. During the waxing Moon, the soul takes on various "incomplete" or "lower" forms of bodies, but now it is capable of manifesting itself in matter as perfectly as matter is capable of, in the human body which is capable of rational thought and reflective consciousness.

17. On the seventeenth day of the month, the astronomical Full Moon occurs. It is possible on such days for a lunar eclipse to occur, and this would fit the second appearance of Set in the myth, out hunting "by the light of the Full Moon" and chopping Osiris into fourteen pieces (the remaining fourteen days of the month, representing the various lives the soul has in a human body). At the same time, Horus (the individual soul) is born: while the soul lived in lower forms, it was as a part of a group soul; now, it is an individual and capable of making its own choices (for better or worse).

25. As the Moon wanes, the soul grows in power relative to the body (which shines ever less completely). On the twenty-fifth day of the month, the Moon becomes a waning crescent, which indicates that the soul is now more powerful than the body (as the fraction of the Moon which is dark is now greater than the fraction of the Moon which is bright). This is represented in the myth as Horus defeating Set the first time, Isis being beheaded and given a cow's head (with horns, representing the now-crescent Moon).

    Eclipses are often portrayed as serpents or dragons; I wonder if Horus's men slaying the serpent, or Apollo slaying the Python, is simply a reiterated reference to the defeat of Set (that is, the resolution of the events which the eclipse originally "brought" into motion).

30. As the Moon continues to wane, the body loses it's hold over it, and the soul gains pre-eminence. At some point during this part of the cycle, Horus defeats Set for a second time, and the soul lives free of matter.

1. Finally, when the Moon is no longer visible, the Sun is again alone and the individual has rejoined its Source, Osiris rules in Egypt, and the cycle begins again.

I don't think any of these points change the interpretation of the myth at all, but based on the above, it is certainly reasonable to say the lunar cycle is woven throughout the myth, and may well indeed be its source. Further, it ties the myth to Plutarch's explanation of the Eleusinian Mysteries (On the Man in the Moon XXVII ff.), suggesting Egyptian authority behind Plutarch's secondhand account of the Mysteries (though in that case, Horus would be the Moon, while Isis would be the Earth).

Let's tie this to another myth, that of Europa and Zeus. Without considering the lunar cycle, it didn't quite line up—Isis becomes a cow at the end of the myth, while here, Zeus becomes a bull at the beginning—but, of course, the Moon has a crescent both when it waxes and when it wanes, and so the Europa myth lines up pretty easily.

Europa (εὐρύς-ὤψ "wide-faced," referring to the surface of the Earth) is Isis, Zeus is Osiris, and Minos is Horus. Europa being from Phoenecia but ending up in Crete shows the transmission of the myth. Zeus's transformation into a bull is representative of the waxing crescent Moon as Europa (the body) is snatched away from home (the spiritual world) to Crete (e.g. the material world)—here, there is no Set, no enemy, no sin: the "snatching away" is the normal, intended course of creation. In Crete, Zeus transforms back from a bull (e.g. the Moon is full and no longer crescent), and Europa has a son by him, Minos, who, like Horus, communed with his father from the spiritual world and was so righteous that he was appointed judge over the dead.

But wait, wasn't Minos a jerk who demanded human sacrifice of Athens every nine years? Well, Plutarch (Life of Theseus XVI) implies, and Diodorus Siculus (Library of History IV lx) says explicitly, that there were two Minoses: this myth concerns the first, who was righteous (like Horus); while the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur concerns the second, who was wicked (like Set), and presumably represents a further transmission and development of the myth (e.g. from Crete to Athens).

δοιοὶ γάρ τε πίθοι κατακείαται ἐν Διὸς οὔδει
δώρων οἷα δίδωσι κακῶν, ἕτερος δὲ ἑάων:
ᾧ μέν κ' ἀμμίξας δώῃ Ζεὺς τερπικέραυνος,
ἄλλοτε μέν τε κακῷ ὅ γε κύρεται, ἄλλοτε δ' ἐσθλῷ:
ᾧ δέ κε τῶν λυγρῶν δώῃ, λωβητὸν ἔθηκε,
καί ἑ κακὴ βούβρωστις ἐπὶ χθόνα δῖαν ἐλαύνει,
φοιτᾷ δ' οὔτε θεοῖσι τετιμένος οὔτε βροτοῖσιν.

For two jars sit on the floor of Zeus's house,
one full of curses, the other blessings.
To the man Thunder-Loving Zeus gives of them mixed,
his luck changes with the times—here good, there bad;
but to the man he gives only of the bad, abuse is his lot:
evil misery harries him over the divine earth,
and he wanders respected by neither gods nor men.

(Akhilles speaking. Homer, Iliad XXIV 527–33, as translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly.)

But Zeus never gives of his jars unmixed—if it seems so, it is only because of the temporal mist on our eyes; so if there is only trauma here, there must be some recompense for it, either in the past or in the future; so either karma is your fate, or blessings are your destiny. The inability to see this is, I presume, why Akhilles's shade sat in Hades, still bemoaning his lot long after.

ὄρνις γάρ σφιν ἐπῆλθε περησέμεναι μεμαῶσιν αἰετὸς ὑψιπέτης ἐπ᾽ ἀριστερὰ λαὸν ἐέργων φοινήεντα δράκοντα φέρων ὀνύχεσσι πέλωρον ζωὸν ἔτ᾽ ἀσπαίροντα, καὶ οὔ πω λήθετο χάρμης, κόψε γὰρ αὐτὸν ἔχοντα κατὰ στῆθος παρὰ δειρὴν ἰδνωθεὶς ὀπίσω: ὃ δ᾽ ἀπὸ ἕθεν ἧκε χαμᾶζε ἀλγήσας ὀδύνῃσι, μέσῳ δ᾽ ἐνὶ κάββαλ᾽ ὁμίλῳ, αὐτὸς δὲ κλάγξας πέτετο πνοιῇς ἀνέμοιο. Jove's bird on sounding pinions beat the skies; A bleeding serpent of enormous size His talons trussed; alive, and curling round, He stung the bird, whose throat received the wound: Mad with the smart, he drops the fatal prey, In airy circle wings his painful way, Floats on the winds, and rends the heaven with cries; Amidst the host the fallen serpent lies. (Homer, Iliad XII ll. 200–7, tr. Alexander Pope.)

As I said previously, I think that the myth of Isis describes the macrocosm, the myth of Osiris describes the mesocosm, and the myth of Horus describes the microcosm. Meditating on the first, therefore, taught me all sorts of interesting things about the structure of the cosmos. Meditating on the second can, presumably, teach us many things about society, but I confess that (as something of a hermit and a misanthrope) my meditations on the topic have not been very fruitful. But the last is, perhaps, the most interesting of the three to me, because, given that Fire has descended and divided, meditating on it should teach us what we can do about it.

Alas, though, what Plutarch gives us to work with is so sparse! So little of the ancient mysteries are recorded, and Plutarch has explicitly neutered much of what little was available in the interests of propriety. I have endeavored to reconstruct as much of the myth as I can from other sources, but even with those, there is not a lot to work with. (We do happen to have a papyrus specifically concerning this part of the myth, but it's very fragmentary and pretty weird, and I had trouble making much use of it.) So, just like in the Isis and Osiris myths, I've wished to attach an equivalent Greek myth to compare against. I had two candidates especially to dig into for this.

The first was the myth of Apollo, which is recounted in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. (This is pretty reasonable since Apollo is implicitly related to Horus by Homer, Odyssey XV 525–6; and explicitly equated with Horus by Herodotus, History II cxliv; Diodorus Siculus, Library of History I xxv; Plutarch, Isis and Osiris XII; etc.; and Leto is explicitly equated with Isis by Isidorus, the Oxyrhynchus papyrus, etc.) In that myth, Zeus is Osiris; Hera, Set; Leto (Lycian lada, "wife"), Isis; Asteria ("starry," cf. astral), Nephthys; Apollo, Horus; Artemis (here, daughter of Zeus and Asteria rather than Apollo's twin), Anubis; and Delos, Buto. Leto wanders before giving birth to Apollo in Delos in the same way that Isis wanders before giving birth to Horus in Buto; Leto does not nurse Apollo but he is fed ambrosia and nectar in the same way that Isis does not nurse Diktys; finally, Apollo slays the Delphic serpent in the same way that Horus's men slay the serpent chasing Tewaret. The Apollo myth came to Greece by way of Lycia—presumably this is why Apollo was on the side of the Trojans in the Iliad?—and since the myth claims the first priests of Apollo were sailors from Crete, I suppose that the transmission of this myth is from Egypt, to Crete, to Lycia, to Greece.

The second was the myth of Io, which is recounted in Pseudo-Apollodorus, Library II i. (Again, this is pretty reasonable since Io is explicitly equated with Isis by Diodorus Siculus, Library of History, I xxiv; Ovid, Metamorphoses IX l. 666 ff.; the Oxyrhynchus papyrus; the Suda; etc.) Io is turned into a cow in the same way Isis's head is replaced with a cow's; Hermes frees Io in the same way as Thoth rescues Isis; Hera induces Io to wander in the same way as Set induces Isis to wander; Io gives birth to Epaphus when she reaches Egypt in the same way as Isis gives birth to Horus upon her return to Egypt; Hera's kidnapping of Epaphus causes Io to search for him in the same way as Set's dismemberment of Osiris causes Isis to search for him, producing Horus; the queen of Byblos nurses Epaphus in the same way as Isis "nurses" Diktys; and finally, upon her return to Egypt, Io becomes queen and institutes the mysteries in the same way as Isis institutes the mysteries after finding Osiris's pieces. Since Io is said to be the ancestor of a great many heroes (Perseus, Cadmus, Heracles, Minos, etc.)—some of whom are directly related to Dionysus—I suppose that those myths all share some chain of transmission, though it is difficult to say exactly how.

Sadly, since only rags and tatters match up—and not even in order!—neither shed a lot of light on our myth. While pondering this in my perplexity, though, my angel (ever a tease) posed a riddle to me, which lead me to realize that the story of Tiresias advising Odysseus in Hades (Odyssey XI) is the mirror image of Osiris training Horus from Hades. Tiresias prophesies the last leg of Odysseus's homeward journey, and the structure of this prophecy matches closely with the Horus myth:

I find the parallels between these two narratives compelling, and will need to reread the Odyssey with the Isis and Osiris myths in mind. I have, in the past, been fairly critical of using Homer as a theological source, but one cannot dispute that the blind Chian casts a long shadow over the philosophers; his stories obviously came from somewhere, and these days I am becoming increasingly suspicious that "somewhere" means "Egypt" in the same way that "Western philosophy" means "Plato." (Plutarch (Isis and Osiris XXXIV) says as much, and there are those legends that Homer studied under the "imagination of Egypt;" cf. Photius, Library CXC; Eustathius on the Odyssey I.) Anyway, the linking of Horus and Odysseus puts us on firm ground, since Plotinus (Enneads I vi §8–9) and Thomas Taylor (The Wanderings of Ulysses) both explain what Odysseus's journey means in a manner agreeable, it seems to me, with the interpretation of Empedocles that I have been working with, so let's take a look.

Osiris's questions to Horus (D1, above) run like this:

Osiris. What do you think is the best thing?

Horus. To avenge one's parents!

Osiris. Okay. What animal is most useful to a soldier?

Horus thinks for a moment. A horse.

Osiris raises his eyebrows. Why?

Horus. Well, a lion would be better in a pinch, but without a horse, how could you annihilate the fleeing enemy!?

Osiris beams. Yes! You are ready, my son!

I should emphasize how out-of-character this is for Osiris: he is elsewhere described as gentle, charming, laughter-loving, fond of dance, and he went out of his way (as king of Egypt) to civilize the world through pursuation rather than force. Horus, on the other hand, is bloodthirsty and merciless. If you've ever seen a falcon eat, perhaps that's unsurprising, but in terms of the myth, I believe Horus is so determined because there is no half-assing spirituality: if one is to try to ascend, they must devote their whole being to it; if they do not, they cannot become whole, and the soul must be whole to be like Fire, which is indivisible. So even though Osiris is, himself, peaceful and gentle, he encourages Horus's resolve of Necessity: after all, Horus is the son of stern-and-severe Isis, too, and having the backbone she furnishes is table stakes for the difficult climb up the mountain. Tiresias says as much to Odysseus, too: "You seek to return home, mighty Odysseus, and home is sweet as honey; but heaven will make your voyage hard and dangerous, because I do not think the Earthshaker will fail to see you and he is furious at you for blinding his son." Odysseus is less bloodthirsty than Horus, but nonetheless resigns himself to his fate: "Alas, Tiresias, if that is the thread which the gods have spun, then I have no say in the matter."

Then we have the three battles between Horus and Set, only the first of which is really described in any detail. In this part of the myth, I don't think Set is acting as Air itself, but rather as something of a proxy for Strife; this is because Air is separatory from the perspective of Fire, and Horus is "avenging" Osiris. The three battles represent the individual soul transcending each of Earth, Water, and Air, respectively, in the process of returning to its Source. This isn't as straightforward as it seems at first, though, because of a couple structural considerations stemming from how the natures of the four roots. First, Earth and Water are both material and separate out under the influence of Strife simultaneously, so a soul still requires the use of a material body until it has transcended both. Second, Fire is indivisible and descends whole and therefore must reascend whole; this implies that the third battle with Set cannot occur until all souls are ready to transcend Air simultaneously, which is something that only occurs at the end of time, when the cosmos again comes completely under the influence of Love.

What does it mean for the soul to transcend the roots? Plato's Diotima discusses it (in a roundabout sort of way) in the Symposium (201D ff.) and Plotinus discusses it in Enneads I ii "On Virtue" (which Porphyry summarizes, more lucidly I think, in the 34th of his Sentences). One's Earthy part is the physical body, the soul's "bestial" part: to transcend Earth is to move beyond purely sensory experience and gain the ability to consider ideals on the same level as them; this is the mastery of Plato's "civic virtues," the ability to live a civilized life as a man rather than the savage life of an animal. One's Watery part is one's desiring faculty, its hungers and needs: to transcend Water is to move beyond material desires; this is the mastery of Plotinus's "purificatory virtues," the ability to cease to concern oneself with material things in favor of spiritual things. One's Airy part is the soul's emotional faculty, its ability to experience and judge things from an individual perspective: to transcend Air is to move beyond individuality completely; this is the mastery of Plotinus's "contemplative virtues," the ability to process things from all perspectives simultaneously, rather than one-at-a-time. Diotima says concordantly that one climbs the ladder of love from personal beauty to general beauty, from general beauty to abstract beauty, and from abstract beauty to universal beauty. Meanwhile, Porphyry explains that mastery of the civic virtues makes one a human; the purificatory virtues, an angel; and the contemplative virtues, a god (indeed, in this context, the god Osiris-Horus specifically, as all souls return to their Source).

Only the first of these is illustrated in the Horus myth, the transcending of Earth. That it is Earth and not Water is made clear in a few ways. First, we have the killing of the snake: we have seen destroyed phalluses already, with Isis cutting Osiris out of the heather stalk (representing matter being made to support other-than-bestial forms) and with the fish eating Osiris's penis (representing society being structured to foster an other-than-bestial life). The killing of the snake itself seems to be one "hacking to pieces" (analysing and overcoming) their bestial nature. Second, Tewaret is a concubine of Set's—a "lesser Nephthys," perhaps a being of Water rather than Water itself—which suggests to me the harnessing of desire (for peace, for comfort, for security, etc.) to create a civilized existence; that is, it is for this desire that the bestial nature is hacked to pieces. Third, Horus's violent deposing of Isis is a pretty literal—if violent, calling to mind the words of another initiate—description of the individual soul transcending Earth.

In the Odysseus story, this first battle plays out between Ææa (representing the bestial life, which is why everyone is a pig except Odysseus, who has Hermes—intelligence—guiding him) and Ogygia (home to Calypso, the seductive daughter of Atlas "who separates Earth from Heaven"). Odysseus encounters many monsters and troubles, and while he manages to escape from each (with difficulty), his men are unable to control themselves and are not so lucky, and so Odysseus comes to Ogygia alone. From this, Thomas Taylor (riffing on Plotinus, Enneads II iii §13?) makes the excellent point that there are three categories of souls. The first, which he likens to Heracles (and I might liken to Pythagoras or the Buddha or Jesus), is mighty and is capable of saving both themselves and others; if Odysseus was one of these, he and his men would have traveled swiftly back to Ithaca. No, Odysseus (who I might liken to dear Porphyry), rather, is of the second category, strong enough to save himself but not strong enough to save others, and this is why he struggles and strains to return to Ithaca, and manages it only after tremendous delay with neither his men nor his ship nor his plunder. (The third category is the mass of men, strong enough to accomplish nothing but get eaten by some monster or drown at sea—that is, to be lost in sense experience. Here, I disagree a little with Taylor, as eventually all souls must return to their Source, but it may take such time and suffering as to make Odysseus's journey seem luxurious by comparison.)

The episode with Horus's eye is pretty opaque, and in fact Plutarch omits it entirely from his recording of the myth, but it becomes much more understandable when we compare it to the Odysseus story. Notice how, in D3, Horus loses his eye while Odysseus loses his ship, while in D8, Horus gets his eye back and Odysseus is ferried to Ithaca on a Phæacian ship; these imply that Horus's eye and Odysseus's ship are, symbolically, the same. I didn't notice any references describing it specifically, but Odysseus's original ship is presumably a normal one (if of fine quality); on the other hand, Homer tells us the Phæacian ships are magical, the gift of Poseidon and "swift as a thought." Recall what Empedocles says of sight:

γαίῃ μὲν γὰρ γαῖαν ὀπώπαμεν, ὕδατι δ' ὕδωρ,
αἰθέρι δ' αἰθέρα δῖον, ἀτὰρ πυρὶ πῦρ ἀίδηλον,
στοργὴν δὲ στοργῇ, νεῖκος δέ τε νείκει λυγρῷ.

We see Earth by Earth, Water by Water,
Aither by divine Aither, Fire by destructive Fire,
Love by Love, and Strife by baneful Strife.

I think Horus's eye and Odysseus's ship represent what one is capable of seeing: Horus's original (mundane) eye is the Earth-eye by which we see Earth, while the returned eye is the (magical) Water-eye by which we see Water. (In theory, there is also a (divine) Air-eye by which we see Air, but this last is inherent to the individual soul and it doesn't need a vehicle to house it, which is why Horus doesn't lose his eye a second time and why Odysseus's final journey must be made on foot and without the use of a ship at all.) It is of interest to me that Horus does without his eye for a while, able neither to properly see Earth nor Water, since I have experienced this myself: I have nearly lost the ability to perceive and enjoy the beauty of Earth, but I am only very slowly developing the ability to see and appreciate higher beauty, so there is something of a gap where I seem to have a foot in both worlds but it feels more like having a foot in neither. (I wonder if this is what St. John of the Cross was talking about when he describes "the dark night of the soul.") In any case, just as we see Odysseus climbing the ladder of roots in his use of vehicles, we see the same thing reiterated in the guidance he receives: in escaping from Circe and Calypso (transcending Earth), Odysseus is guided by Hermes, who (in terms I've discussed previously) is his intelligence; in reclaiming his household (transcending Water), Odysseus is guided by Athena, who is his wisdom; however, Odysseus receives no help at all in propitiating Poseidon (transcending Air), since in doing so he is guided only by Truth.

At the same time as the soul loses its eye for material things, Set is said to lose his testicles, for which the Pythagoreans' famous censure of "beans" comes to mind:

An old and false opinion has seized men and prevailed, that the philosopher Pythagoras [...] abstained from the bean, which the Greeks call κύαμος. In accordance with this opinion, the poet Callimachus wrote:

As Pythagoras, I tell you too:
Abstain from beans, a malign food.

[...] It seems that the cause of the error about not dining on beans is that in the poem of Empedocles, who followed Pythagoras's teachings, this verse is found:

δειλοί, πάνδειλοι, κυάμων ἄπο χεῖρας ἔχεσθαι

Wretches, utter wretches, keep your hands off beans!

For most people thought that κύαμοι refered to the legume, as is the common usage. But those who have studied Empedocles's poem with more care and learning say that in this place κύαμοι means "testicles" and that these are called κύαμοι in the Pythagorean manner, cryptically and symbolically, because they conceive [punning κύαμος "bean" with κυεῖν "to conceive"] and supply the power of human reproduction. So, in that verse Empedocles wanted to draw men away not from eating beans but from a desire for sex.

(Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights IV xi.)

The first battle closes with Set in chains, brought by a triumphant Horus before Queen Isis. In the same way that gentle Osiris acts bizarrely in this myth, so too does his wife: normally severe and uncompromising, here she meekly lets her husband's murderer go free. The reason for this is, of course, that Earth is the extremity of the cosmos and most under the influence of Strife: Isis has no power over Set, whether she wishes it or not. Horus's decapitating of Isis and claiming the throne demonstrates that he asserts control over Earth, and is no longer bound to submit to her will: having mastered the civic virtues, he now is bound by a higher law than those of the Law-Giver. The replacement of Isis's head with that of a cow's shows that, rather than Earth being the master (as a human), she is now a docile beast of burden (as a cow): since Horus has mastered being human, the body can now be recognized as a mere tool rather than one's whole being. This is similar to Odysseus on Ogygia: Calypso is ever trying to seduce Odysseus, but even with all her blandishments, Odysseus simply no longer cares for creature-comforts, even those of a goddess, but is completely detached from them and ever sits on the shore looking towards Ithaca and hoping to see even a wisp of smoke on the horizon. Calypso even promises him immortality, but Calypso's sort of immortality is just more turnings on the wheel of rebirth.

While I am following what I think is a Pythagorean take on the myth, it must be noted that Manetho (Epitome of Physical Doctrines) and Diodorus Siculus (Library of History I xi) say that the Egyptians came up with all this by watching the Sun and Moon in their revolutions in the sky. I have avoided following that interpretation for now, though it has much to recommend it. (For example, the fourteen pieces that Osiris is chopped into is the two week period of the waxing Moon; Set is said to have killed Osiris under the light of the full Moon; Set is likened to the eclipses, which "eat" the Sun; etc.) But consider: if the Sun is Osiris, the soul, and the Moon is Isis, the body, then the Moon is full when she is furthest from the Sun; this is when the soul is lost in matter and the body shines brightest. But just after this, as the Moon begins to return to the Sun, she wanes, and at the very point when the body is less bright than the soul (that is, less than half of it is illuminated), the Moon becomes crescent-shaped. Perhaps this is also what is signified by Isis taking on the horns of a cow.

After the triumph over Earth comes the trial of Horus, and given the placement in the myth and the overall symbolism of a courtroom, this must surely refer to the judgement of the dead for their deeds and misdeeds in life (cf. J. Gwyn Griffiths, The Conflict of Horus and Seth III). Unlike the cautionary episodes in the myth of Isis (e. g. of Diktys and his brother), this episode is salutary: Horus has acted righteously and is rewarded for his behavior, as his eye is returned to him and his authority is legitimized. In the Odyssey, Zeus judges Odysseus to be "beyond all men in understanding and in sacrifice to the deathless gods" and lends the explicit support of Olympus to his return home. The message here is that if one acts righteously and devotes themselves to heaven, then heaven will return the favor and support them in their upward journey. Since, as I have said, one must transcend both Earth and Water to become free of material existence, and since Water has not yet been transcended by this point in the narrative, then I must suppose that this refers to reincarnation into circumstances more conducive to their spiritual growth.

Reincarnation wasn't a widespread belief in ancient Greece (cf. Homer, Iliad XXI l. 569); in fact, it was considered a peculiarity, and perhaps the keynote, of Pythagoras's teachings:

[Pythagoras] was accustomed to speak of himself in this manner: that he had formerly been Æthalides, and had been accounted the son of Mercury, and that Mercury had desired him to select any gift he pleased except immortality; he accordingly had requested that, whether living or dead, he might preserve the memory of what had happened to him. [...] At a subsequent period he passed into Euphorbus, and was wounded by Menelaus, and while he was Euphorbus, he used to say that he had formerly been Æthalides, and that he had received as a gift from Mercury the perpetual transmigration of his soul, so that it was constantly transmigrating and passing into whatever plants or animals it pleased, and he had also received the gift of knowing and recollecting all that his soul had suffered in hell, and what sufferings too are endured by the rest of the souls.

But after Euphorbus died, he said that his soul had passed into Hermotimus, and when he wished to convince people of this, he went into the territory of the Branchidæ, and going into the temple of Apollo, he showed his shield which Menelaus had dedicated there as an offering, for he said that he, when he sailed from Troy, had offered up his shield which was already getting worn out, to Apollo, and that nothing remained but the ivory face which was on it. When Hermotimus died, then he said that he had become Pyrrhus, a fisherman of Delos, and that he still recollected everything, how he had been formerly Æthalides, then Euphorbus, then Hermotimus, and then Pyrrhus. When Pyrrhus died, he became Pythagoras, and he still recollected all the aforementioned circumstances.

(Diogenes Laertius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers VIII i §4. Aulus Gellius (Attic Nights IV xi) adds that Pythagoras also claimed to have been "a beautiful courtesan named Alco.")

Empedocles famously echoes Pythagoras's teachings:

ἤδη γάρ ποτ' ἐγὼ γενόμην κοῦρός τε κόρη τε
θάμνος τ' οἰωνός τε καὶ ἐξ άλὸς ἔμπορος ἰχθύς.

For I have already become a boy and a girl
And a bush and a bird and a fish from the sea.

This is one of those teachings that causes modern commentators to suppose that Pythagoras got his doctrines from the East, but I see no reason not to suppose that the Egyptians had some similar belief. Herodotus says so explicitly (Histories II cxxiii); meanwhile, Diogenes Laertius (Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers VIII ii §2) tells us that Plato was an initiate of the Pythagoreans but, like Empedocles, was expelled for revealing the mysteries in writing; and he espouses the doctrine in the Republic, and in the Phædrus (246A–9D) he goes further and says that normal souls must struggle for ten thousand years to "grow their wings," but those souls who choose philosophical lives three times in a row "will have wings given them." In the Odyssey, after Zeus judges Odysseus favorably, he has three days' swim ahead of him before he is given the use of the Phæacian ship, "swift as wings," exhibiting nearly identical symbolism. Since the return voyage part of the Odyssey fits the Horus myth so closely, it seems plausible to me that the teaching ultimately comes from Heliopolis but the detail was either not available to Plutarch, or else was excised from the myth along with Isis's beheading and the loss of Horus's eye. (It's hard to say which! In describing the Eleusinian mysteries (On the Man in the Moon XXVII ff.), Plutarch speaks of triumphant souls being given "wreaths of feathers," and while he connects the Isis myth to his explanation there (Isis and Osiris XLIV ff.) it's perhaps more likely that he's simply following Plato.)

Not only does wisdom support Odysseus in those philosophical lives, but Zeus gives explicit divine aid comes in the form of the White Goddess (Ino, daughter of Cadmus, whom Zeus divinized), who gives Odysseus her veil so that he might safely reach land, which seems to me to symbolise those dæmons who call to the souls nearing the upper world as (for example) those of Socrates or Plotinus.

In any case, after the three philosophical lives, Horus defeats Set a second time, meanwhile Odysseus is "given wings" in the form of the Phæacian ship, returns to Ithaca, and sets his house in order, turning out all things discordant and foreign. (Indeed, the suitors remind me of nothing so much as of Plotinus's analogy of the assembly (Enneads IV iv §17), where the "brawlers and roarers" overpower the wise-but-quiet words of the best; but here, the best overrules them.) The individual soul has thus traversed the ocean (transcended Water) and become a hero: no longer do they require a material body, but they proceed to live in the world of Air as a pure soul alongside the golden race. What does the soul do there? I really don't know, and I suspect we couldn't comprehend it anyway: Horus is the child of Fire and Earth, and so those two realms must be completely natural to him; similarly, he was nursed by Water, and so while he is a foreigner there, it is at least familiar to him; but he lacks that same sort of connection with Air, and so it must be rather alien. I suppose, like Socrates (Phædo 67A–C) that we should simply have the good hope that when we reach there, that we shall "be with the pure and know all that is pure."

There remains only the third battle between Horus and Set, and for Odysseus to propitiate Poseidon. I think it very appropriate that, while it is foretold by Tiresias, the Odyssey ends before Odysseus actually goes and accomplishes it. This is because Fire is indivisible: in the same way as it must descend whole, it must also reascend whole. This means that the soul finally rejoining its Source and Goal can only occur for all souls simultaneously countless eons from now, after the last souls finally leave the material world behind and the roots begin to collapse together again. At that point, this cycle of the cosmos will end, all will be joined in Love (as Tiresias says, "your people shall be happy round you"), and a new cycle will begin where Fire will descend into matter anew (as Tiresias says, "death shall come to you from the sea"). All this is beyond the scope of the individual, and that is why the Odyssey, which is about the individual soul, ends before it takes place; in any case, I imagine this final battle to be much more sedate, requiring none of the tremendous trauma of the first two: merely long ages of time.

And with that, we're through the mysteries of Isis, Osiris, and Horus! (Phew!) I never expected to spend five months on a mere nine pages of prose, and yet exploring them has helped me to make a lot more sense of Greek mythology, the philosophical tradition, and my own personal theology and place in the cosmos; so I can see why my angel led me to it and encouraged me to study it.

While I'm satisfied with my first—erm, first-and-a-half?—pass through the myth itself, there are still a few bits and pieces I'd like to follow-up on. What's the deal with Perseus and Andromeda? There's supposedly an echo of the myth in the Iliad XIV, is that so? I've shown the second half of the Odyssey to fit the myth, but what about the rest of it? I've mentioned that I think Apuleius was an initiate of Isis, Osiris, and Horus; but does his myth of Cupid and Psyche fit, too? Is there anything to be gained by more deeply considering the Sun and Moon cycle as the origin of the myth? These are all interesting to me and you may see a smattering of smaller and less formal posts on them in the coming weeks and months as I have a chance to explore them, but they're tangential to the myth itself and so I'm considering them more in the mode of appendices.

One of those bits and pieces, though, is Achilles; I've been re-reading the Iliad over the holidays, so why don't I deal with him briefly, here? I mentioned before that his birth and childhood match the myth of Isis; it is also the case, I think, that his prophecy and death match the myth of Horus. Achilles's signature characteristic is wrath, just like Horus's is vengeance. At Horus's trial, it is said that Geb, his grandfather, was the judge; in the same way, Achilles's grandfather, Æacus, is the judge of the dead in the underworld. Just like Horus, Achilles is a demi-god, possessing a mortal half (his body) and an immortal half (his name); and just like Odysseus with Penelope and Calypso, Achilles got to choose which half was which: he could live forever as a nobody, or die young but be immortalized in glory. Achilles made the right choice, favoring soul over body. Will you?

ὤ μοι ἐγὼ τί πάθω; μέγα μὲν κακὸν αἴ κε φέβωμαι
πληθὺν ταρβήσας: τὸ δὲ ῥίγιον αἴ κεν ἁλώω
μοῦνος: τοὺς δ᾽ ἄλλους Δαναοὺς ἐφόβησε Κρονίων.
ἀλλὰ τί ἤ μοι ταῦτα φίλος διελέξατο θυμός;
οἶδα γὰρ ὅττι κακοὶ μὲν ἀποίχονται πολέμοιο,
ὃς δέ κ᾽ ἀριστεύῃσι μάχῃ ἔνι τὸν δὲ μάλα χρεὼ
ἑστάμεναι κρατερῶς, ἤ τ᾽ ἔβλητ᾽ ἤ τ᾽ ἔβαλ᾽ ἄλλον.

"What to do? It'd be a big disgrace to run,
afraid of so many; but it would be worse to be captured
alone, since Zeus scared off all my men.
But why am I arguing with myself?
I know better than anyone that losers wimp out,
but whoever would be a hero must
stand firm, win or lose."

(Odusseus speaking. Homer, Iliad XI 404–10, as loosely translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly.)

Remember that Odusseus had eleven more long years of "standing firm" as a hero (ἀριστεύῃσι μάχῃ "to be the best at fighting") before he became a Hero (ἥρω "ascended human soul"). Nobody said it would be easy, but what's the alternative?