sdi

Hmm. Herodotos says (Histories I §131) of the Persians,

They call the whole circle of heaven Zeus [e.g. Ahura-Mazda], and to him they offer sacrifice on the highest peaks of the mountains; they sacrifice also to the sun and moon and earth and fire and water and winds.⁠ These are the only gods to whom they have ever sacrificed from the beginning.

Of course we see Empedokles's four roots there. There's just one problem: Empeokles was contemporaneous with Herodotos, writing about the same time as him. (They both lived in what is now Italy, but in different regions: Empedokles in Sicily, and Herodotos in what is now Calabria.)

So here we have another source referencing the same doctrine at the same time as Empedokles. This is another argument in favor of my hypothesis that the four roots did not originate with him, but that he learned them from the Pythagoreans, who learned them from Pythagoras. Where did Pythagoras get them? I had made the case that he got them from the Egyptian mysteries on the basis of deific and symbolic associations, and that's plausible, but then—assuming Herodotos isn't misleading us—it suggests that the Egyptians similarly influenced the Zoroastrians.

On the other hand, Pythagoras is said to have studied with just about everyone (including the Persian magi, though how he had time for it after spending 20 years in Egypt is anyone's guess), and so it's possible that the Greek doctrine of the roots came from the Persians. But then it's a remarkable coincidence that these line up so nicely with the Egyptian teachings which apparently predate Zoroastrianism (or even Mazdaism) by at least a millennium.

Alternatively, it could be that the four roots were generally current in the spiritual milieu of the time, and Empedokles was simply the first to write it down. (This wouldn't be too surprising, since Empedokles was expelled from the Pythagoreans for doing so, meaning that it was a secret teaching.)

Whichever of the cases is true, I think we can be reasonably confident that the teaching didn't originate with Empedokles.

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?

And while I'm at it, I'll leave you all with a question I've been pondering.

I'm pretty convinced that many of the hero myths and mystery cults in Greece are derivative of those of Horos: they line up too nicely to be a coincidence, in my opinion, and the Greeks themselves say they came from Egypt. There's just one outlier, and to my mind it's such a huge one that it dismantles much of my thesis that the Greeks got all this from Egypt.

Apollon.

While all of his symbolism is identical to Horos's, and while (early, Delian) Apollon's family relationships match up with those of Horos (Zeus=Osiris, Leto=Isis, Asteria=Nephthys, Artemis=Anubis), that's about it: Apollon's myths don't have a Seth-equivalent and don't form a coherent story-arc like the hero myths do (rather, telling a variety of disconnected stories, somewhat like the early Gilgamesh tales before they were compiled into the Epic).

There is also the insistence that Apollon came to the Greeks from Hyperborea, far to the north, this being the birthplace of Leto, the winter home of Apollon, the home of Abaris (his favored priest), etc. etc. (Diodoros of Sicily, Library of History II xlvii)

So while all the Greek heroes seem to be Horos, the Greek hero-in-chief conspicuously does not and seems to come from somewhere to the north. Supporting this, there are rumors in channeled and alternative-history sources that say that the Iliad took place in northern Europe and came to the Aegean along with "the sea peoples" who displaced the Mycenaeans, and these same sources are ones that indicate that what we know as Egypt began as an Atlantean colony or refugee settlement. This is notable since I have speculated (on the basis of the symbolism) that the Horos-myth could be a reaction to the Atlantean civilization; if that's so, it's of course noteworthy that Egypt isn't the only place with literally monumental religio-scientific structures beyond the capability of neolithic societies.

So what are we to make of this? Did the Egyptians get Horos from somewhere else? Is Hyperborea a strictly mythical (rather than historical) location? Are Horos and Apollon two parallel branches of some third source, now lost and/or obscured? What, if anything, does all this have to do with Atlantis?

I guess if there's any takeaway, it's humility: we know so little, and that even if I have pretty convincing evidence of all these hero-myths being related, correlation is not causation...