sdi

☤

Happy Hermes-Day! Can we talk about Teiresias for a second? That whole thing with the snakes [item 3] has been bothering me.

So if you're recall, one day blind Teiresias was walking on Mount Kullene (the birthplace of Hermes), stumbled across two snakes entwined in sex, and he accidentally crushes one or both of them with his staff. Hera was infuriated at this and changed Teiresias into a woman. Teiresias becomes a priestess of Hera. At some point, Apollo advises Teiresias that if he ever happens upon the same situation to crush one or the other of the snakes with his staff; in the eighth year of being a woman, Teiresias does and is restored to his original form.

This is clearly a story about reincarnation in order to learn a particular lesson: Teiresias is each of us, Teiresias's sex-change is reincarnating into different bodies, Hera is "mother Earth" and becoming her priestess is to devote oneself to learning her lessons; Apollo is the mysteries and his advice is the mystery teachings; eight years is a "great year" representing one's greater life (Apollodoros, Library III iv §2).

All that is very straightforward, I think; the only question is, what is the lesson to be learned? It has something to do with polarity, certainly, which already puts me at a disadvantage since I'm of a monistic bent and have a difficult time making sense of dualities; but it is further complicated by the fact that almost every version of the story we possess tells it differently. I tend to trust Apollodoros more than the others, but his version is itself ambiguous, so we're on our own.

Thinking about this, though, reminded me of the Ra Material; if you're not familiar with it, it's one of the major channeled texts of the New Age movement. (Since it's a channeled text, we're already in super-grain-of-salt-territory, but bear with me.) "Ra" states that there are seven degrees of consciousness, and that each degree of consciousness has a lesson to learn in order for beings of that consciousness to move to the next degree of consciousness. First degree beings (like minerals) are static and inanimate, and their lesson is to learn to move and grow. Second degree beings (like plants and animals) are animate but unselfconscious, and their lesson is to learn individuality. We humans are third degree beings, and our lesson is to learn to relate the individual to the all. "Ra" says that there are two polarities of relating to the all: the positive pole of giving to others or compassion, and the negative pole of taking from others or selfishness; since all is one, both the love of others and the love of self are ways of loving the all, and so either way can carry one upwards, but the crucial point is to develop enough reflective capacity and will to be capable of actively choosing a path.

Of course, all models are wrong, but some are useful: true or not, "Ra's" model certainly has the merit of making sense of the snakes. The female snake is the negative pole (and let me stress that I'm not denouncing women, I am referring strictly to the inward-attracting direction of any negative pole); the male snake is the positive pole (as outward-emitting); Teiresias is doomed to reincarnation by being incapable of choosing a path (his first killing is accidental); over a great year he studies the lessons of earth, guided by the mysteries; finally, he is freed from reincarnation by choosing a path (his second killing is willed). Perhaps it even makes sense of why so many variants of the story are recorded: a "pure" version of the story, like the "Ra" material, stresses the free will of the individual to choose as they please; however, "moralistic" versions of the story might urge the individual to prefer one or the other polarity. (And I can certainly sympathize with this: I would, myself, much rather hasten to the light in love than sound the darkness in isolation.)

Penises (as emblematic of male sexuality) are really all over the mysteries, from the phalluses in the temples of Osiris to the thursoi of Dionusos. (Hell, if you haven't read De Dea Syria, there's a veritable boatload of penises in there for you.) I've always thought that's pretty weird to say the least, but if it's an injunction towards the positive pole, that would at least make some sense of it.

It is interesting to me that Hermes picked up the image of the story as his symbol, carrying always the kerukeion with it's two snakes coiling around Teiresias's cornel-wood staff, topped by the wings which the development of will grants. It is interesting that this became Hermes's symbol even though Athena also figures prominently in the Teiresias myth; we see just the opposite in the Perseus myth, where Perseus is guided by both gods, but only Athena took her symbol—the head of Medousa affixed to a shield—from there.

ποιμένες ἄγραυλοι, κάκ᾽ ἐλέγχεα, γαστέρες οἶον,
ἴδμεν ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγειν ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα,
ἴδμεν δ᾽, εὖτ᾽ ἐθέλωμεν, ἀληθέα γηρύσασθαι.

"Boorish shepherds—you disgraceful wretches, nothing but stomachs!—
we know how to say many convincing lies,
but we know also, when we please, how to sing true."

(The Muses of Mount Helikon speaking. Hesiod, Theogony 26–8.)

I have been thinking a lot lately about the spiritual process.

I have studied, and continue to study, a lot—but truth is simplicity itself: ἕν τὸ πᾶν "all is one." The closer one can actualize that notion, the closer to divinity one is. No amount of study can add to that.

And yet the study is not for nothing; one often needs much scaffolding to build a tower, even if it all gets pulled away and torn down thereafter. This was called to mind forcefully today as I began my attempt to reread Hesiod haltingly in Greek and read the above lines. (He's much harder than Homer, since while Homer has an elegance about his speech, Hesiod is coarse and takes, shall we say, tremendous liberties with his grammar to make the verse work. Simonides said that Hesiod was taught by the Muses, while Homer was taught by the Graces, and this seems about right to me.)

Who are Hesiod's Muses? Well, recall our fourfold schemata of consciousness, and note that light is truth. In Air, light is transmitted clearly, so all there is true. In Earth, light is not transmitted and only received, so all there is false. (Indeed, this is why there is no "user manual" for life here in the world of Earth, and why we need to grope about in darkness.) Water is translucent, just as Air is, but unlike Air, the light there can be reflected and refracted: when the Water is calm, the light passes true, but if the Water bends on itself cleverly, it can distort the light in whatever ways it pleases—even seeming true when it is quite false. So the Muses are clearly daimons, beings of Water, shepherding the shepherd—inner-plane initiatrixes, we may say, rather than the guiding angels I am so fond of. (Thus while one may learn from them—and from Hesiod!—great care must be taken, as they can't be trusted to be Good, just as they warn us.)

This identification is very useful, I think, and was effortless to make, but it must be noted that I've studied Empedokles with at least some care for something like six years, ever since I first took up geomancy. It took so much effort and contemplation to finally penetrate the proper simplicity of the model, so that now I can easily use it as a map and identify something from it. Now that I comprehend the model in it's simplicity, a lot of what I studied is now redundant... but it cannot be said to be "wasted," since without the complicated I couldn't have gotten to the simple.

So it is with spirituality. It is perhaps best to just clear the mind and sit in zazen; but without a koan or sutra or some other material for the soul to work on, the leap may never come, just as you may have all the reagent in the world, but without catalyst, the reaction can't occur.

The end may be utter simplicity, but there are long miles of breadcrumbs we must follow that we may appreciate it.

A man decays
His corpse is dust
His family dies
But his books live on

(Chester Beatty Papyrus IV, as translated by Susan Brind Morrow.)

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

(Laozi, Tao Te Ching I, as translated by Stephen Mitchell.)

Its definition, in fact, could be only "the indefinable": what is not a thing is not some definite thing. We are in agony for a true expression; we are talking of the untellable; we name, only to indicate for our own use as best we may. And this name, The One, contains really no more than the negation of plurality: under the same pressure the Pythagoreans found their indication in the symbol "Apollo" [a=not, pollon=of many] with its repudiation of the multiple. If we are led to think positively of The One, name and thing, there would be more truth in silence: the designation, a mere aid to enquiry, was never intended for more than a preliminary affirmation of absolute simplicity to be followed by the rejection of even that statement: it was the best that offered, but remains inadequate to express the Nature indicated. For this is a principle not to be conveyed by any sound; it cannot be known on any hearing but, if at all, by vision; and to hope in that vision to see a form is to fail of even that.

(Plotinos, Enneads V v "On the Nature of the Good" §6.)

Gutei raised his finger whenever he was asked a question about Zen. A boy attendant began to imitate him in this way. When anyone asked the boy what his master had preached about, the boy would raise his finger. Gutei heard about the boy's mischief. He seized him and cut off his finger. The boy cried and ran away. Gutei called and stopped him. When the boy turned his head to Gutei, Gutei raised up his own finger. In that instant the boy was enlightened.

(Wumen Huikai, The Gateless Gate, as translated by Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps.)

To write something and leave it behind us,
It is but a dream.
When we awake we know
There is not even anyone to read it.

(Ikkyu.)

I have never understood Memory. Why should one wish to remember or be remembered? The earth is not a place of Memory, it is a place of Forgetting, and it is by Forgetting we become unearthly. Isn't it?

And yet the "Orphic" tradition highly prizes Memory: Hesiod was initiated by her daughters; Homer urges the initiate to remember everything; Pythagoras's prior incarnation, Aithalides, so prized Memory that it was the one gift he asked of Hermes (Apollonios Rhodios, Argonautica 640 ff.; Diogenes Laertios, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers VIII iv); the Delphic god says "Know Thyself;" the Orphics and Platonists emphasize drinking from her pool rather than the stream of Forgetting; the Orphic Hymn to Memory goes so far as to say that it is wicked to forget. But Memory is a thing of the world below: God has no Memory, it simply Is; even Souls have no Memory, they merely survey the entire sweep of their great Life as attention requires.

Memory is, perhaps, simply a paradox. There is nothing that can be said, and yet where would I be if they didn't try?

εἰπεῖν· Γῆς παῖς εἰμι καὶ Οὐρανοῦ ἀστερόεντος,
αὐτὰρ ἐμοὶ γένος Οὐράνιον· τόδε δ’ ἴστε καὶ αὐτοί.
δίψηι δ’ εἰμὶ αὔη καὶ ἀπόλλυμαι. ἀλλὰ δότ’ αἶψα
ψυχρὸν ὕδωρ προρέον τῆς Μνημοσύνης ἀπὸ λίμνης.
To say: "I am a child of Earth and starry Heaven,
but my race is of Heaven—even you yourselves know this—
and I am parched with thirst and dying; so, quick, please give me
the cool water flowing forth from the pool of Memory."
(The Petelia Tablet, ll. 6–9a. Note that "dying," apollumai, is a pun with Apollon.)

The Orphics used to tie little gold leaves inscribed with instructions around the necks of deceased initiates, that they might avoid reincarnation. When the recently deceased came to the guardians of Haides, they would be asked, "Who are you?" and they were to answer, "I am a child of Earth and starry Heaven, but my race is of Heaven." This was called to mind today, and it reminded me, of course, of Horos (see here, item 9)—when brought to judgement (e.g. after death), the gods held him, though born of both fiery Osiris and earthy Isis, to be of the race of his father and thus worthy of his throne.

That the Orphics, who are thought to be Pythagorean, got their doctrines from Egypt is no surprise; but there's something else: that first line from the tablet is taken, nearly word-for-word, from old Hesiod:

χαίρετε τέκνα Διός, δότε δ᾽ ἱμερόεσσαν ἀοιδήν·
κλείετε δ᾽ ἀθανάτων ἱερὸν γένος αἰὲν ἐόντων,
οἳ Γῆς τ᾽ ἐξεγένοντο καὶ Οὐρανοῦ ἀστερόεντος,
Νυκτός τε δνοφερῆς, οὕς θ᾽ ἁλμυρὸς ἔτρεφε Πόντος.
Greetings, children of Zeus, and grant me a delightful song:
glorify the sacred race of the immortals who always are,
who were born from Earth and starry Heaven,
and from dark Night, and those who were nourished by salty Sea.
(Hesiod, Theogony 104–7, emphasis mine.)

But wait a second, Hesiod lists not only the parents of the immortals, but their nurses, too. But is this not just what Empedokles said?

τέσσαρα γὰρ πάντων ῥιζώματα πρῶτον ἄκουε·
Ζεὺς ἀργὴς Ἥρη τε φερέσβιος ἠδ' Ἀιδωνεύς,
Νῆστις θ' ἣ δακρύοις τέγγει κρούνωμα βρότειον. [...]
ἐκ τῶν πάνθ' ὅσα τ' ἦν ὅσα τ' ἔστι καὶ ἔσται ὀπίσσω,
δέδρεά τ' ὲβλάστησε καὶ ἀνέρες ἠδὲ γυναῖκες,
θῆρές τ' οἰωνοί τε καὶ ὑδατοθρέμμονες ἰχθῦς,
καί τε θεοὶ δολιχαίωνες τιμῇσι φέριστοι.
First, hear of the four roots of all things:
shining Zeus and life-giving Hera and Aidoneus
and Nestis, who wets the springs of mortals with her tears. [...]
From these all things were and are and will be:
sprouting trees and men and women,
beasts and birds and water-dwelling fish,
even long-living, most-exalted gods.

That Earth is Isis and Heaven is Osiris is an easy association to make: Ouranos even lost his penis in the sea (ll. 176 ff.), just like Osiris lost his in the Nile. Even though Hesiod associates Night with Watery things later on (like Death and Sleep and Dreams, ll. 211 ff.), I think those might be due to reconciliation of the source teaching—after all, Hesiod was the great systematizer of all the wild panoply of Greek theology (thus probably mixing the pure teachings from several sources), and anyway we are unable to see at Night meanwhile Haides means "unseen" (both references to how Airy beings are without form). And Sea is obviously Watery (like Nestis), here described as a nurse (like Nephthus and Nestis both), and of course the father of the Old Man of the Sea and all other shapeshifters (as Watery beings have fluid form rather than the fixed form of Earthy beings).

I had speculated before that Hesiod's "races of men" came from the same source as Empedokles's "roots;" after seeing this, I now think the case is even stronger that Hesiod's Muses were Egyptian. I even begin to wonder if the laurel staff they gave him was, in fact, a was-scepter, the symbol of authority:

𓌀

ἡδὺ δὲ καὶ τὸ πυθέσθαι, ὅσα θνητοῖσιν ἔνειμαν
ἀθάνατοι, δειλῶν τε καὶ ἐσθλῶν τέμαρ ἐναργές

and it is sweet too to learn the clear distinguishing mark
of bad and good things that the immortals have assigned to mortals

(Hesiod, Melampodia, as quoted by Clement of Alexandria, and as translated by Glenn W. Most.)

I remember reading somewhere, I think in a book discussing past life regression with hypnotism, of a psychologist who was trying to understand why some people turn out virtuous and others don't. He had heard of a pair of twin brothers, one of whom was a respected doctor, the other of whom was in prison, and this intrigued him, since, at least in theory, they should have been raised similarly. So he went to interview them. He first interviewed the brother who was a doctor, and asked him, "How did you become so successful?" The doctor told him, "Well, my father was always in and out of prison, all through my childhood. So with a father like that, how could I have done otherwise?" The psychologist next went to interview the brother who was a criminal, and asked him the same question. The criminal told him, "Well, my father was always in and out of prison, all through my childhood. So with a father like that, how could I have done otherwise?"

So to Hesiod's point, the real sweetness is when one finally learns that the distinguishing mark is on the mortal and not on the circumstances...

Wepwawet is onomatopoeia for the wild dog's cry, the well-known coyote's cry at the rising of the moon. But in keeping with the tendency of hieroglyphs to contain layes of deeper meaning, this word is not simply a name. It is a verbal phrase. The hieroglyphic name (𓄋𓈐𓈐𓈐) is spelled with a pair of horns, wp (to open), followed by wat (path) in the plural, wawat: three pictures of the sign for path. Hence the action is implicit in the thing, the verb is hidden in the noun: the dog, conjured by the sound of its name, does something—it is the opener of paths. The dog embodies a primary Egyptian concept, what we have come to call evil. The wild dog is a very dangerous animal. Yet the dog has a dual nature. It is its own twin: it is wild but can be tamed. Hence, the wild dog is not a bad thing; it is, after all, a dog, the ultimate tracker, the animal that finds the path. The dog appears in the text as a gradual elaboration of this idea. It appears as Anubis (𓃢), the wild dog tamed, ears back, tail down, black like the night, where it shows you how to find the way. Next the dog appears as Set (𓃩), with ears up and raised tail forked like lightning, ready to kill. Set is the universal embodiment of the wilderness, the wolf. This form of the dog means danger. [...] The dog embodies the purest love and the greatest danger, the mystery of good and bad in one.

(Susan Brind Morrow, The Dawning Moon of the Mind I ii.)

This links up to my thought that Anoubis is karma: a dog can be wild, which hungrily chases one and tears them to pieces (cf. Aktaion), or it can be tamed, devotedly following one and supporting them (cf. Anoubis weighing the heart).

It is also a support of my theory that Plotinos is a wepwawet (woof woof)...

More translation practice! I'm getting a little faster: this batch was twenty lines a day! I find, as I read Homer in Greek, that the stories' connection to philosophy and the Mysteries is far more obvious than it is in translation, as so many of the words or phrases carry double meanings...

313

315

320

325

330

335

340

345

350

ὣς ἄρα μιν εἰπόντ’ ἔλασεν μέγα κῦμα κατ’ ἄκρης
δεινὸν ἐπεσσύμενον, περὶ δὲ σχεδίην ἐλέλιξε.
τῆλε δ’ ἀπὸ σχεδίης αὐτὸς πέσε, πηδάλιον δὲ
ἐκ χειρῶν προέηκε: μέσον δέ οἱ ἱστὸν ἔαξεν
δεινὴ μισγομένων ἀνέμων ἐλθοῦσα θύελλα,
τηλοῦ δὲ σπεῖρον καὶ ἐπίκριον ἔμπεσε πόντῳ.
τὸν δ’ ἄρ’ ὑπόβρυχα θῆκε πολὺν χρόνον, οὐδ’ ἐδυνάσθη
αἶψα μάλ’ ἀνσχεθέειν μεγάλου ὑπὸ κύματος ὁρμῆς:
εἵματα γάρ ῥ’ ἐβάρυνε, τά οἱ πόρε δῖα Καλυψώ.
ὀψὲ δὲ δή ῥ’ ἀνέδυ, στόματος δ’ ἐξέπτυσεν ἅλμην
πικρήν, ἥ οἱ πολλὴ ἀπὸ κρατὸς κελάρυζεν.
ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ὣς σχεδίης ἐπελήθετο, τειρόμενός περ,
ἀλλὰ μεθορμηθεὶς ἐνὶ κύμασιν ἐλλάβετ’ αὐτῆς,
ἐν μέσσῃ δὲ καθῖζε τέλος θανάτου ἀλεείνων.
τὴν δ’ ἐφόρει μέγα κῦμα κατὰ ῥόον ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα.
ὡς δ’ ὅτ’ ὀπωρινὸς Βορέης φορέῃσιν ἀκάνθας
ἂμ πεδίον, πυκιναὶ δὲ πρὸς ἀλλήλῃσιν ἔχονται,
ὣς τὴν ἂμ πέλαγος ἄνεμοι φέρον ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα:
ἄλλοτε μέν τε Νότος Βορέῃ προβάλεσκε φέρεσθαι,
ἄλλοτε δ’ αὖτ’ Εὖρος Ζεφύρῳ εἴξασκε διώκειν.

τὸν δὲ ἴδεν Κάδμου θυγάτηρ, καλλίσφυρος Ἰνώ,
Λευκοθέη, ἣ πρὶν μὲν ἔην βροτὸς αὐδήεσσα,
νῦν δ’ ἁλὸς ἐν πελάγεσσι θεῶν ἒξ ἔμμορε τιμῆς.
ἥ ῥ’ Ὀδυσῆ’ ἐλέησεν ἀλώμενον, ἄλγε’ ἔχοντα,
αἰθυίῃ δ’ ἐικυῖα ποτῇ ἀνεδύσετο λίμνης,
ἷζε δ’ ἐπὶ σχεδίης πολυδέσμου εἶπέ τε μῦθον:

κάμμορε, τίπτε τοι ὧδε Ποσειδάων ἐνοσίχθων
ὠδύσατ’ ἐκπάγλως, ὅτι τοι κακὰ πολλὰ φυτεύει;
οὐ μὲν δή σε καταφθίσει μάλα περ μενεαίνων.
ἀλλὰ μάλ’ ὧδ’ ἔρξαι, δοκέεις δέ μοι οὐκ ἀπινύσσειν:
εἵματα ταῦτ’ ἀποδὺς σχεδίην ἀνέμοισι φέρεσθαι
κάλλιπ’, ἀτὰρ χείρεσσι νέων ἐπιμαίεο νόστου
γαίης Φαιήκων, ὅθι τοι μοῖρ’ ἐστὶν ἀλύξαι.
τῆ δέ, τόδε κρήδεμνον ὑπὸ στέρνοιο τανύσσαι
ἄμβροτον: οὐδέ τί τοι παθέειν δέος οὐδ’ ἀπολέσθαι.
αὐτὰρ ἐπὴν χείρεσσιν ἐφάψεαι ἠπείροιο,
ἂψ ἀπολυσάμενος βαλέειν εἰς οἴνοπα πόντον
πολλὸν ἀπ’ ἠπείρου, αὐτὸς δ’ ἀπονόσφι τραπέσθαι.

ὣς ἄρα φωνήσασα θεὰ κρήδεμνον ἔδωκεν,
αὐτὴ δ’ ἂψ ἐς πόντον ἐδύσετο κυμαίνοντα
αἰθυίῃ ἐικυῖα: μέλαν δέ ἑ κῦμα κάλυψεν.

As he was talking to himself, a frightfully great wave drove down
rushing over him, and his raft whirled around.
He was thrown far from the raft, the rudder
yanked from his hands; and the mast shattered in the middle
from a terrible blast of the whirling winds,
the yard-arm and sail plunging deep into the sea.
A long time he was held under, and he wasn't able
to very quickly rise from under the rush of the mighty wave
since the clothes which Kalupso gave him weighed him down.*
Finally, at length he surfaced, his mouth spitting out bitter brine
which ran in many streams from his crown.
He didn't forget the raft in spite of his distress,
but rushed after it in the waves and held it to himself,
and he sat in the middle to hide from a deadly end,
as the great wave carried it here and there in the current.
Just like how, in late summer, Boreas* carries thistledown
along the plain, and clusters cling to each other,
in the same way the winds carried the raft here and there in the sea:
at once Notos* tossing it to Boreas to carry,
and again Euros* giving it up for Zephuros* to chase.

And then came the daughter of Kadmos, dainty-footed Ino,*
the White* Goddess, who used to be a mortal possessed of voice,*
but now, in the sea, receives her share of reverence given to its gods.
She pitied Odusseus in his wandering and the suffering he bore,
and she rose from the water like a seabird in flight,
alighted upon the raft of many fastenings, and said to him:

“You poor thing, why is Poseidaon Earth-Shaker so
very mad at you, that he causes you so much trouble?
Don't worry,* he won't kill you even though he really wants to.
But you seem sensible enough to me, so do as I say:
take off your clothes and abandon your raft* to be borne by the winds,
but, swimming with your hands,* try to get to
the land of the Phaiakians, where it is your fate to escape.
And here, wrap my immortal veil around your chest,
so that you may fear neither suffering nor death;
but when you've laid hands on the firm ground,
untie it and throw it back into the wine-like sea*
far from land, and turn yourself far away* from it.”

So speaking, the goddess gave him her veil,
and dove back into the surging sea
like a bird, and the dark swell covered her.

(Homer, Odyssey V 313–53, as translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly.)

Notes:

The clothes which Kalupso gave him weighed him down: Kalupso ("one who covers") is sensual desire, and the clothes she gives Odusseus are the physical body (which enables sensual desire). Focusing on the body, of course, hampers the soul which wishes to return home.
Boreas: the frigid north wind.
Notos: the desiccating south wind.
Euros: the wet east wind.
Zephuros: the balmy west wind.
Ino: Ino is the daugher of Kadmos, sister of Semele, and aunt and nurse of Dionusos. She represents the Mysteries guiding the mature soul which, having already mastered the fear of death (e.g. Kirke) and sensual desire (e.g. Kalupso), is nonetheless still lost in the material world and doesn't know the way home.
White: representative of purity (as the Mysteries are meant to purify the soul) and simplicity (as the Mysteries are meant to unify the soul). See also I Ching 22:6 and the Tao Te Ching 67.
Possessed of voice: humans communicate to the ears with words, but gods communicate directly to the mind with concepts, a thing which is at once uncanny and completely natural when one experiences it.
Don't worry: μὲν δή, not really translatable but representing a continuation of the prior sentence's thought, so I have added this phrase to bridge the two sentences.
Take off your clothes and abandon your raft: the clothes represent the body of dense matter and the raft represents the imagination of subtle matter, and the advice of the Mysteries is to prioritize the spiritual over the material, to "store up your treasures in heaven."
Swimming with your hands: it is not enough to merely experience the Mysteries; material things passively grow on their own, but spiritual things only grow by making active effort.
Immortal veil: the veil represents the teachings of the Mystery schools and tying the veil around the chest is to hold them close to heart. I'm torn on whether this represents how the teachings act as a psychological life-preserver in the welter of life or whether it represents some more esoteric spiritual connection to the god which acts to buoy one upward; certainly my philosophical studies suggest the former, but my personal experiences suggest the latter.
Wine-like sea: οἴνοπα πόντον, literally "wine-faced sea" and usually taken as "dark in color," but the sea is a reference to life in the material world, which is as intoxicating and disorienting to the soul as wine is to the body.
Turn yourself far away from it: the Buddha taught that, just like a raft was good for crossing a river but pointless once one got to the other side, the Mysteries are for passing over and not for holding on to.

Recall how I have been tracing two categories of myths: the city myth, and the hero myths that are embedded within the city myth? I think they describe two different categories of time: the city myth is cyclical, while the hero myth is linear. The city myth therefore describes the world, but the hero myth describes one's experience within the world; and it must be noted that there are many heroes for a given city, each with different goals: some, like Ganumedes, are spirited away during the city's lifetime; some, like Aineias and Teiresias, leave the city before it is destroyed to found a new one; some, like Horos and Orestes and Alkmaion, avenge their father who was betrayed while away at the city; some, like Perseus and Odusseus, merely find their way home.

But let me take a moment to describe why I think the city-myth is cyclic. If we look at the royal line of Thebai from it's founding to it's destruction, we see these seven generations:

↓ Kadmos Founds Thebai. Given necklace of Harmonia. ↓	→	Oudaios Born from the earth. ↓
Poludoros ↓		Euerous ↓
Labdakos ↓		Teiresias Lives for seven generations. ↓
Laios ↓		↓
Oidipous ↓		↓
Seven Against Thebai ↓		↓
Epigone Laodamas killed. Thersandros's line continues on but leaves Thebai. The necklace is taken to Argos. ×		Leaves Thebai to found Haliartos. ↓

We see a hero found the city, and then seven generations later, his line peters out, but a new hero arises and leads a remnant of the city to found a new city as the old one is destroyed.

Now, compare this to the Troian royal line:

↓ Dardanos Founds Dardanos. ↓
Erikhthonios ↓
Tros
↙ Ilos Founds Troia, which mostly subsumes Darnados. ↓	↘ Assarakos ↓
Laomedon ↓	Kapus ↓
Priam ↓	Ankhises ↓
Hektor Zeus withdraws favor. Line ends. ×	Aineias Leaves Troia and rebuilds it after the Akhaians sack it. ↓

This is very similar: a city is founded, the primary line dies, but a secondary line spawns a hero who founds a new city after the destruction of the first, seven generations later.

We see that many of these cities come from previously founded cities: Thebai is founded because Kadmos is barred from returning home; Haliartos is founded because Thebai is destroyed; Dardanos is founded because of a catastrophic flood that destroyed Arkadia; Troia is refounded after it is burned to the ground.

I think these indicate world ages, after which the old world is destroyed in fire and flood and a new one begins, just like Plato's priest of Sais describes. I have mentioned that I wonder if the Horos-myth is a reaction to Atlantis; this would be a very natural result if Atlantis was the city of a prior age, just as Troia is the city of our age.

ὤ μοι, τέκνον ἐμόν, περὶ πάντων κάμμορε φωτῶν,
οὔ τί σε Περσεφόνεια Διὸς θυγάτηρ ἀπαφίσκει,
ἀλλ’ αὕτη δίκη ἐστὶ βροτῶν, ὅτε τίς κε θάνῃσιν:
οὐ γὰρ ἔτι σάρκας τε καὶ ὀστέα ἶνες ἔχουσιν,
ἀλλὰ τὰ μέν τε πυρὸς κρατερὸν μένος αἰθομένοιο
δαμνᾷ, ἐπεί κε πρῶτα λίπῃ λεύκ’ ὀστέα θυμός,
ψυχὴ δ’ ἠύτ’ ὄνειρος ἀποπταμένη πεπότηται.
ἀλλὰ φόωσδε τάχιστα λιλαίεο: ταῦτα δὲ πάντα
ἴσθ’, ἵνα καὶ μετόπισθε τεῇ εἴπῃσθα γυναικί.

Oh! my child, unluckiest of all men,
Persephoneia, the daughter of Zeus, isn't deceiving you:
this is just the way it is when a mortal dies,
for sinews no longer hold flesh and bones together,
but the mighty force of blazing fire overcomes them
once spirit first leaves the white bones,
and soul, like a dream, flutters up and away.
But be anxious to hurry to the light; and remember all,
so that you can tell your wife even after.

(Antikleia speaking to Odusseus. Homer, Odyssey XI 216–24.)

μὴ δή μοι θάνατόν γε παραύδα, φαίδιμ’ Ὀδυσσεῦ.
βουλοίμην κ’ ἐπάρουρος ἐὼν θητευέμεν ἄλλῳ,
ἀνδρὶ παρ’ ἀκλήρῳ, ᾧ μὴ βίοτος πολὺς εἴη,
ἢ πᾶσιν νεκύεσσι καταφθιμένοισιν ἀνάσσειν.

Don't talk to me about death, Mr. Smarty-Pants.*
I would rather be a hired laborer slaving for another,
a man with no land and little means,
than to be king of all the wretched dead.

(Akhilleus speaking to Odusseus. Homer, Odyssey XI 488–91.)

Mr. Smarty-Pants: φαίδιμ’ Ὀδυσσεῦ, literally "brilliant Odysseus," but I take this sarcastically, as immediately above (473–6) he says, "if you're so clever, why the hell did you go to Hell?"

If we take Haides to be the material world, it really puts a different spin on Antikleia's and Akhilleus's words, doesn't it?

τὸ δ’ ἐν Σάει τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς [...] ἕδος ἐπιγραφὴν εἶχε τοιαύτην “ἐγώ εἰμι πᾶν τὸ γεγονὸς καὶ ὂν καὶ ἐσόμενον καὶ τὸν ἐμὸν πέπλον οὐδείς πω θνητὸς ἀπεκάλυψεν.”

The statue of Athena [=Neith] at Sais has the following inscription: “I am all that was and is and will be and no mortal has yet uncovered my dress.”

(Ploutarkhos, Isis and Osiris IX, as translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly.)

Ah, but there was a mortal who uncovered Athena's dress (albeit accidentally): the great seer of Thebai, Teiresias. Many conflicting stories are told about him (her?), and I spent a few days trying to sort out his (their?) myth. Here is my best guess at a reconstruction, with a few observations:

Kadmos ("pre-eminent") is led to the spot which would become Thebai by a cow with a moon-shaped spot on it. The nearby spring is guarded by a dragon; Kadmos slays it and, on the advice of Athene, sows its teeth. The teeth grow into a host of warriors, and Kadmos throws stones into the group, which causes them to attack each other until there are only five left, who pledge allegiance to Kadmos. One of these five, Oudaios ("from the ground"), has a son named Euerous ("well-built"). Euerous marries the nymph Khariklo ("famous for her beauty"), who is a favorite attendant of Athena, and they have a son, Teiresias ("prophet"). [Apollodoros, Library III iv, vi.]
1. Euerous is only said to be "of the line" of Oudaios, but two considerations require Teiresias to be within two generations of him: first, he is blinded some time before Kadmos's grandson, Aktaion, is killed; second, Teiresias becomes seer to Kadmos, and so is at least partially contemporaneous with him.
2. Teiresias having one parent's line being literally sprung from the earth and the other being divine has the same crucial resonance with other heroes, but perhaps none more than Aineias, who's paternal grandfather was the brother of the founder of Troia (like how Oudaios was the close associate of the founder of Thebai), whose mother was Aphrodite (who, like Khariklo, is a divinity "famous for her beauty"), and who rescued those who could be from the sack of Troia.
One summer day, Athena, Khariklo, and young Teiresias are traveling through Mt. Helikon. Teiresias goes off to explore while Athena and Khariklo bathe in the spring of Hippokrene ("horse spring"). At some point, Teiresias comes back to the spring to get a drink, sees Athena naked, and is blinded for it by the law of Zeus. Athena is upset about this, but cannot override her father; so as to make amends to Khariklo, she gives Teiresias the gifts of prophecy, augury, long life, retaining his wits after death, and a magic staff of cornel-wood which would "guide his feet." [Kallimakhos on the Bath of Pallas; Apollodoros, Library III vi.]
1. The Hippokrene is also where the Muses bathed before giving Hesiod the gifts of an inspired voice and a staff of laurel-wood. [Hesiod, Theogony 1–35.] Both seem to me reminiscent of how initiates of Osiris were purified and given heather stalks, or initiates of Dionusos were purified and given thursoi.
2. The Bath of Pallas, which gives wisdom even as it inflicts punishment, is, of course, life in the material world, which is almost always treated as a purification or cleansing of the soul. (Indeed, Empedocles's famous poem on the topic, which I have used as the basis of my interpretation of the hero-myths, is called Purifications.)
3. Teiresias's blindness and gifts, of course, are exactly the point of spirituality: one loses the ability to engage in the material world but gains the ability to engage in the spiritual world both now and after they die.
4. Kallimakhos explicitly links this story to that of Aktaion. Both beheld their patron deity naked (Athena for Teiresias, Artemis for Aktaion), but Teiresias made good of evil, while Aktaion did not. I wonder if seeing one's patron naked is the point of no return in spirituality: after that, one must either cease to be mortal or cease to be—there is no longer a middle ground, and this is why Neith's statue says that no mortal has uncovered her dress.
5. There is an alternate version of the story (made famous by Ovid) where Teiresias was blinded when he settled a bet between Zeus and Hera, saying that sex is ten times better for women than men. I dismiss this one out of hand, because it is of a popular nature and because spiritual teachings are unitive rather than divisive.
While traveling through Mt. Kullene, Teiresias comes upon two serpents entwined in sex and crushes them with his staff. This so incenses Hera that she changes Teiresias into a woman. Teiresias becomes a priestess of Hera, marries, and has a daughter named Manto ("prophecy"). At some point, Apollo tells Teiresias that if she comes upon a pair of serpents, to repeat her prior action, which happens in the eighth year after the first time, and she is changed back into a man. [Phlegon, Book of Wonders; Apollodoros, Library III vi.]
1. Mt. Kullene is the birthplace of Hermes, and his symbol, the kerukeion, is two serpents entwined around a staff. Even today we call androgynous people mercurial. Teiresias being initiated by Hermes (if only figuratively) and Athena is shared by other hero myths, like Perseus and Odusseus.
2. Surviving sources disagree about which serpent or serpents are crushed in each event. Most sources are either ambiguous or say both each time (and this is what I've followed), though others say that the female was crushed each time, or the female the first time and the male the second time. Whatever the case, the sex-change is an obvious reference to reincarnation; the killing of the serpents inadvertently is a symbol of dying without purpose, but the killing of the serpents intentionally is a symbol of dying with purpose. This is the same as the myth of Perseus, where the Gorgons ("grim things") represent death; but while Stheno ("forceful") and Euruale ("far-ranging") are immortal, indicating that death cannot be overpowered or outrun, Medousa ("she rules") is mortal, indicating that death doesn't need to control us (and, indeed, can be put to good use—as Plotinos says, why should death trouble an immortal?). Therefore, Manto represents the realization of one's true self, the soul which animates the body, which only comes through experience.
3. The serpentine symbolism is also present in the Kadmos myth, where he kills the serpent of Ares, serves Ares for eight years, marries Ares's daughter Harmonia, and finally is transformed with his wife into a pair of serpents.
4. Archbishop Eustathios of Thessalonike, following an elegiac poet named Sostratos, tells an alternate version of the story in which Teiresias was born female and changed sexes six times before finally being turned into mouse (and presumably eaten by a weasel). I also dismiss this out of hand, because it is of a popular nature and is impossible to reconcile with both of the only reliable fixed points of the Teiresias's life: his rescue of Thebai and the necromantic ritual of Odusseus.
When the Seven attack Thebai, the Thebaians ask Teiresias how they should be victorious, and he advises that if Menoikeus ("strength of the house"), son of Kreon, willingly sacrifices himself to Ares, that the Thebaians would be victorious, which he does and they are. Ten years later, when the Epigone attack Thebai and king Laodamas ("tamer of the people") is killed by Alkmaion (general of the Argives), Teiresias advises the people to send a herald to negotiate with the enemy and secretly flee meanwhile, which they do. Apollo shoots him with an arrow as he drinks from the spring of Tilphoussa and he dies there, but the people continue on to found Haliartos (about fifteen miles from Thebai). Manto, however, is captured by the Argives and, since they had promised "the most beautiful of the spoils" to Apollo, send her to Delphi. She becomes a priestess of the god and he sends her to Colophon to found an oracle. There, she marries Rhakios ("rag"), and has a son by him, Mopsos, who is also a celebrated seer and the rival of Kalkhos in the Nostoi. [Pausanias, Descriptions of Greece VII iii, IX xviii, IX xxxiii; Apollodoros, Library III vi–vii, Epitome vi.]
1. Tilphoussa is the spring where Apollo first tried to institute his oracle, but the water nymph dissuaded him; after taking over the oracle at Delphi, he later returned and cursed the spring. [Homeric Hymn to Apollo 239–76, 375–87.]
2. I have a theory that the myth of the house of Kadmos represents the mysteries, just like the myth of the house of Atreus or the myth of the house of Atum. If that is so, then the reason why Teiresias participated in the seven generations of Thebai up to the epigone (Kadmos→Poludoros→Labdakos→Laios/Kreon→Oidipous→Polunikes/Eteokles/Ismene/Antigone→Laodamas/Thersandros) is because he participated in the mysteries and, having mastering these, he was able to, on the one hand, save the women and children of Thebai, and on the other, guide future heroes (e.g. Odusseus) on the way home.
3. Tilphoussa is on Mt. Tilphosium, which is right next to Mt. Helikon (which is where the Hippokrene was). There is something very Wizard of Oz about Teiresias's life ending where it "began."
4. That Teiresias ("prophet") dies but Manto ("prophecy") lives on to serve others is, of course, a common motif in spirituality and reminds me more of Plotinos than anyone.
5. Manto marrying Rhakios ("rag") certainly shows how the mystery teachings are valued in the world: that is to say, not at all, and I wonder to what degree we possess the likes of Plato today because of his homosexual pedophilia, or Plotinos because nobody knew what to make of him, or Apollodoros because the mysteries were hidden in silly stories that nobody took seriously. Mopsos became celebrated precisely because he recognized the hidden value of those rags, though.
While lost at sea, Odusseus travels to Haides and summons Teiresias, receiving advice on how to safely return home. [Homer, Odyssey X–XI.]

The reason why being a student is so great is that you can be wrong all you want and it's not a problem—you just fix the mistake, learn something new, and off you go. Today was the first day in a while that I felt like I was capable of thinking well and so I spent a bunch of time reading and thinking about Apollodoros's account of the Theban cycle, when I realized that the Horos myth does have an exile-and-return. In fact, it even has a city! It's Bublos that is the equivalent of Thebai and Troia.

But it isn't Horos that gets exiled, it's Osiris; Horos is only "exiled" in the sense that his seed is contained within Osiris. Osiris is thus sort of the entire Greek host; his box being accepted into Bublos is not so very different from the Troian horse, and his coming back in fourteen pieces is like how the Greek host was scattered to the far winds in their returns.

But this means Aineias isn't Horos. But it turns out I already knew our Horos: it's Orestes, son of Agamemnon. (Which I suppose should have been obvious, since Orestes never goes to Troia, murders his mother, and avenges his father.) We see the same character in the Theban cycle in the figure of Alkmaion, who also murders his mother to avenge his father, is chased by the Erinues, undergoes purifications, etc.

But there were many heroes at Troia (and, indeed, at Thebai). I haven't chased them all down, but the one who really stands out is Diktus, who almost leaves Bublos, but not quite; this one is Akhilleus, who was also nursed-but-not-really by a goddess by day and burned in a fire at night, and managed to survive most of the way through the war before succumbing to passion. (I'm sure he would have left Troia alive had Peleus not cried out upon seeing him burning!) And, while I'm not 100% sure of it, the most likely candidate for Aineias is actually old Teiresias, who led the Thebans away before the Epigone sacked the city, helping them to found a new one.

Anyway, I've a long way to go, but I think there's two takeaways from this. First, always treat your knowledge as provisional; there is always something to be learned by ditching your assumptions. Second, if I want to reconcile my myths, it won't do to simply have a list of point-by-point in the stories: they actually form a sort of tree, with the core stem following Osiris-Horos, the house of Atreus, and Europe's magical necklace, but with branches splaying off at various points depending on which hero we are talking about. This strengthens the hypothesis that the ancients knew there were many spiritual paths and tried to support them...

Some follow-on notes to my realization that Helene/Europe/Persephone/etc. are Osiris rather than Horos:

You remember how I (following, I think, Pythagoras and Empedocles) likened Osiris to Fire? Helene (Ἑλένη) is from ἑλένη "torch." Similarly, Ploutarkhos derives Phersephone (Φερσεφόνη) from φαεσφόρος "light-bringing" (On the Man in the Moon XXVII).

You remember how Osiris's name in Egyptian is a little throne next to a little eye (𓊨𓁹), meaning "the seat of the eye" (that is, the root of our consciousness, god-consciousness)? Europe (Εὐρώπη) is from εὐρύς "wide, broad" and some form of ὁρᾶν "to see," indicating something very similar (that god-consciousness sees all at once).

Κασσάνδρα. ὀτοτοτοῖ πόποι δᾶ. Ὦπολλον Ὦπολλον. [...] Ἄπολλον Ἄπολλον ἀγυιᾶτ᾽, ἀπόλλων ἐμός. ἀπώλεσας γὰρ οὐ μόλις τὸ δεύτερον.

Kassandra. [incoherent screaming] O Ruin! O Ruin... [sobbing] Ruin, Guiding Ruin, my ruining! Twice now you have utterly ruined me... [sobbing]

(Aiskhulos, Agamemnon 1072-82.)

I'm not much of a theater person, but Aiskhulos's Kassandra is harrowing. I've checked something like five translations and, while I'm no expert, nobody seems to translate her well. And honestly I just don't think she can translate well: she's incoherent, rambling, and everything she says seems to have a double or triple meaning. Here, Aiskhulos explicitly connects Ἄπολλον "Apollon" (the god) with the virtually identical ἀπόλλων "destroying utterly" (the action), referring to how Apollon despoils the material world in favor of the spiritual (cf. Horos beheading Isis; Perseus from πέρσευς "pillager [of cities];" etc.) as he has also despoiled Kassandra. Ἄπολλον ἀγυιᾶτα "Apollon of the Roads" refers how Apollon guides initiates on the upward ways but also how he has guided Kassandra to her undoing. One gets the impression of a failed initiate, who saw but was unable to digest what she had seen and was broken by it.

By the Hellenistic era, Apollo was a joyful singer of songs; but to Homer, Apollon was a harsh warrior. I wonder if his golden lyre was only for his heroes; his golden arrows were for everyone else...

I think it is important to note that, while every Greek hero-myth concerns itself with exile and return, in the Egyptian hero-myth, Horos never leaves Egypt.

Plotinos has a line (at the end of Enneads IV ii §2, my translation) which has haunted me ever since I first read it:

ἔστιν οὖν ψυχὴ ἓν καὶ πολλὰ οὕτως· τὰ δὲ ἐν τοῖς σώμασιν εἴδη πολλὰ καὶ ἕν· τὰ δὲ σώματα πολλὰ μόνον· τὸ δ' ὑπέρτατον ἓν μόνον.
So then, soul is one and many in this way; the forms within bodies are many and one; bodies are only many; but the highest is only one.

He was speaking of his emanative principles, but I think it applies just as clearly to Empedocles's roots. Bear with me as I try to explain.

First, forget everything that modern science has taught us about atoms, molecules, gravity, planets, the solar system, etc. Try to think of the universe the way somebody might have three thousand years ago. At the "bottom" of everything is the Earth; above that, Water flows in rivers and lakes and the sea; above that, Air fills the void; and somewhere way above is Fire, the Sun. We think of each of these things as made of particles and such, but the ancients wouldn't have: the Sun is a single "thing;" Air isn't something that can be divided up, it's more of a space-filling continuum; Water can be divided but it can just as easily be joined back together and tends to act as a unit; Earth, however, once divided isn't easily put back together again. And so we see that Plotinos's distinction seems applicable: Fire is one thing only; Air is one thing but it occupies many places; Water is many things but acts as one thing; Earth is many things only.

Next, consider each of these with respect to light. Fire emits light; Air transmits light freely, without distortion; Water transmits light, but it distorts it with refractions and reflections; Earth, however, does not transmit light at all, and merely receives it.

Are you with me so far? I hope I'm making sense.

The magic trick is to equate light and consciousness. Fire is the image of God, who is the source of all consciousness: just as the Sun illuminates all, so too does God experience all (and, indeed, all experience is God's). Light travels freely through the Air in many directions, and this is the image of Heaven, where God's one consciousness pervades all angels, allowing for individualized consciousness but still acting as one; God sees and acts as one through many eyes; this consciousness is as yet unreflective and unselfconscious, but moves and moves rightly as God wills. Water, however, introduces distortions to light and may be physically separated; God's will can be turned to the individuals' wills, and beings may join together and act as one or separate and act individually as they choose. Earth, finally, does not transmit light, but only receives it; the body is a dead thing, unconscious, merely acting as a container for Water.

Because it only acts as a container, beings cannot have Earth-consciousness. Beings with Water-consciousness (whether possessing an Earthy body or not) have the two peculiar properties that they can be self-conscious, on the one hand, and may choose to align or not with God's purposes, on the other. Beings with Air-consciousness are not self-conscious or reflective (though this is not to say without unique characteristics), and convey only God's light to all, acting as one, naturally and without effort. And, of course, there is only one Fire-consciousness, and it simply is.

Thus we see our five gods: fiery Osiris simply is, innocent and pure; airy Seth is divisive only insofar as he is the medium for individual consciousness; earthy Isis and watery Nephthus are always working together, mother supporting and nurse nourishing; and bright Horos is the light which shines from Osiris through and onto all.

Thus we also see our three worlds: fire, air, and our muddy Tartaros. If you wish to leave Tartaros, it isn't enough to leave the body behind: you must clear your water so as to transmit light as clearly and as naturally as possible, with as little need of self-conscious reflection as possible (though I think it takes lots of self-conscious reflection to get to that point). Is this way you diminish the individual will and allow God's will to operate through you. One can do that with or without a body, and so the body becomes vestigial, allowing one to join the angels. Plotinos says (Enneads III v §2) that there is no marriage in heaven, but this seems to me to have the emphasis backwards: there, all things are joined together.

Many years ago, while I was studying Zen, I misquoted Ruth Fuller Sasaki in my diary: "Only when one has no things in their mind and no mind in their things are they unearthly, empty, and marvelous." (I didn't write down the source or the original quote, alas.) But the misquote has stuck with me and I feel like I'm finally beginning to understand it.

I have often seen it said in both occult texts and descriptions of NDEs that souls, when born into a body, are given not a single death-date, but two, which they may choose between during their mortal life. I've always wondered where the doctrine came from.

It occurs to me just now that maybe it comes from the mysteries, after all:

μήτηρ γάρ τέ μέ φησι θεὰ Θέτις ἀργυρόπεζα
διχθαδίας κῆρας φερέμεν θανάτοιο τέλος δέ.
εἰ μέν κ’ αὖθι μένων Τρώων πόλιν ἀμφιμάχωμαι,
ὤλετο μέν μοι νόστος, ἀτὰρ κλέος ἄφθιτον ἔσται:
εἰ δέ κεν οἴκαδ’ ἵκωμι φίλην ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν,
ὤλετό μοι κλέος ἐσθλόν, ἐπὶ δηρὸν δέ μοι αἰὼν
ἔσσεται, οὐδέ κέ μ’ ὦκα τέλος θανάτοιο κιχείη.
For my mother, the goddess Thetis of the silver feet, says
that I bear twin angels of death with me to my fate:
if I stay here and besiege the city of the Troians,
then my return is lost, but my name will live forever;
but if I go home to the beloved land of my fathers,
then my noble name is lost, but my life will long
endure, and my fated death will not soon reach me.
(Akhilles speaking. Homer, Iliad IX 410–416, as translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly.)

Personally, I would take this to describe how an initiate must decide whether to spend their efforts on material accomplishments or spiritual accomplishments, since the two are mutually exclusive, but I can see how one might take it otherwise.

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?

(welp my blog has gone from R-rated to X-rated if it hasn't already, sorry)

Something's been bothering me about the Horos myth.

In the Persephone myth, we see that the individual soul lives a blissful existence in Nusa until she "sins" by being tempted by the beautiful narcissus and is forced to live a half-life thereafter; in Hesiod, daimons live on Olumpos until they perjure their oaths to the Stux, being forced into a temporary exile for doing so; in Plotinus, individual souls are eternal and changeless, but temporarily focus their attention away from eternity in inverse proportion to their strength. All of these assume that individual souls pre-exist bodies.

In the Horos myth, though, we have something very different: it is Osiris (consciousness, soul) that falls (in its entirety); Horos doesn't even exist until much later, being born of both Osiris and Isis (matter). This implies that bodies pre-exist individual souls, which is a very different conception of where individual souls come from. Let's see if we can puzzle out what that means, shall we? I think there's four major points we can work from:

It is clear that the gods—Osiris, Set, Isis, and Nephthys—are eternal: when they are said to be born of Geb and Nut, it is speaking of an ontological relationship. But we know that at least the things born of Isis—that is, material things—are mortal and therefore subject to time. I think this is somewhat true of Osiris, too: Empedocles calls the children of Zeus, the daimons, "long-lived" or "immortal," suggesting that they too are subject to time, even if they aren't subject to death. All of this seems to imply that Horos, the individual soul, is of a lower degree than the gods: he isn't eternal but is subject to time, and presumably has a beginning but not an ending.
We also know that Horos is formed from the "essence" of Osiris which Isis magically draws out of his scattered pieces.
We also know that Horos is born premature and lame; he only becomes strong as time goes on.
Finally, we know that while Horos is initially born of Isis and Osiris, the gods eventually strip him of his Isis-part, leaving only the Osiris-part.

These four points seem to suggest to me something like the following:

When a human body is born and is in need of a soul to animate it, it is drawn from some amalgamation of soul-stuff; we might as well call this amalgamation "random," though it is certainly some part of soul that is appropriate to the conditions of the body. Now, this soul-stuff contributes the material of soul, but it is initially unformed or unshaped; by living a human life, the soul is imprinted with some amount of patterning and structure. When the body fails, if the patterning and structure is sufficient to hold the mass of soul together, then a Horos is born; the mass of soul has crystallized into an individual soul. This soul is said to be "born lame" because it initially requires the material body to act as a crutch. On the other hand, if the patterning and structure gained from that first life is insufficient to hold the mass of soul together, then it falls apart and rejoins the pool of unformed soul-stuff from which it came.

Presumably, once the individual soul is born, it can and does go on to animate further bodies and refine its patterning and structure. When this refining has gone on for long enough, it has developed structures or organs of consciousness within it that allow it to exist on its own, without the need for a material body. Once that occurs, then the gods take away Horos's flesh and leave his bones: that is, he exists solely as a construct of consciousness.

If that is all right, it suggests that the teaching presumes that some fraction of people—whatever fraction is presently on their first incarnation—don't have individual souls. I couldn't begin to estimate that fraction, though I imagine it varies by time and place, and it would explain why the myth of Osiris so emphasized the right ordering of society in order to maximize the potential for Horoi to develop (as opposed to, say, ours, which seems to be an attempt to minimize this potential).

It also makes sense of why individual souls are always considered so beautiful and precious: it's because they are precious, being initially very fragile and difficult to bring into being. Of course, all soul-stuff will eventually find its way back to its source, but the rate at which this occurs depends greatly upon how helpful we are to the youngest souls among us (which is to say, presently not at all).

The notion that (some) humans may not have individual souls is not one I have seen in occult philosophy; in fact, the only example that comes to mind is the story of Peer Gynt, where at the end of his life, the Button-Molder insists that Peer is so mediocre that his soul is worthy of neither heaven nor hell and must be melted back down into soul-stuff.

Is any of this likely to be true? I doubt it; it's a model, and "all models are wrong, but some are useful." A better question, then, is what use can we make of such a model?

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...

Homer usually calls Apollon ἑκάεργος "sniper," but Artemis ἰοχέαιρα "arrow-pourer," which suggests that Apollon specializes in accuracy while Artemis specializes in speed. This is a point worth contemplation.

Profile

May 2025

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31

Entries tagged with philosophy

Snakes and Ladders

Reagent and Catalyst

Mnemosune

On Hesiod's Sources

The Distinguishing Mark

Good and Evil

The White Goddess Rises

Further Notes on the City Myth

Guidance of the Dead

The Bath of Pallas

The Joy of Learning

The Names of the Unnameable

Guiding Ruin

There's No Place But Home

Becoming Luminous

Twin Angels of Death

Three Worlds

Isis and Osiris XIV: The Birth of Horos

Mysteries, Lesser and Greater

Concerning Tactics

Profile

May 2025

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary