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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...

䷇
8: Unity. First line moves. When there is confidence in his ruler, accord is blameless. When there is sincerity filling a plain vessel, ultimately there will come other blessings.

[Socrates said to Euthydemus,] "Do you know that to the inquiry, 'How am I to please the gods?' the Delphic god replies, 'Follow the custom [νόμος] of the state;' and everywhere, I suppose, it is the custom that men propitiate the gods with sacrifices according to their power. How then can a man honor the gods more excellently and more devoutly than by doing as they themselves ordain? Only he must fall no whit short of his power. For when he does that, it is surely plain that he is not then honouring the gods. Therefore it is by coming no whit short of his power in honoring the gods that he is to look with confidence for the greatest blessing."

(Xenophon, Memorabilia IV iii.)

Alas, to live in such times that the νόμος ("habit, law") of the state is blood-sacrifice upon the altar of Avarice! Surely that is not what the god means, and perhaps this is what the myth of Osiris is talking about: without a societal example, one cannot please the gods the way they ordain, and one has to cast about in darkness for any means they can. Everyone doing so on their own does not promote societal unity, and so it prevents the expression of divinity (which is characterized by unity).

Still, as Socrates says, the god is honored by one doing their best. Even if the most one can offer is brackish water in a waterskin, if one offers it sincerely, they are without fault.

Photograph of Athena, Nike, and Dionysus by @franditaynch.

As in my last essay, I have compared the myth of Osiris to its precise Greek equivalent, the myth of Dionysus. For being perhaps the most discussed myth of late antiquity, it is very difficult to find a comprehensive, authoritative version of that myth! The best I've managed to find is Thomas Taylor's synthesis (The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries II) of the myth from "a variety of authors:"

I mentioned before that I think Isis and Osiris are universal, and hence the mysteries of Isis and the story of her wandering represents a universal process. Similarly, I think that Horus is the individual soul, and hence the mysteries of Horus and the story of his war with Set represents an individual process. In the same way that Plato (Symposium 202E ff.) mediates gods and men with daimons, and Iamblichus (cf. E. R. Dodds, Proclus: the Elements of Theology pp. xix, xxii) relies on the "law of mean terms" to unite disparate principles, I think that this myth acts as a mediator between the two other myths; so if the mysteries of Isis describe the macrocosm and the mysteries of Horus describe the microcosm, then the mysteries of Osiris must describe the mesocosm. In that sense, it is no wonder that Apuleius (Golden Ass XI) says that the mysteries repeat themselves: they are describing the same process over again from three perspectives.

Recalling that the Isis myth is universal in scope, it refers to a global reunification, in which Earth becomes able to reflect Fire as perfectly as it is capable of, in humanity. We haven't talked about the Horus myth yet, but given that Horus is the individual soul, it refers to the reunification of the individual soul with Fire, it's father and source. Therefore, the Osiris myth is between them in scope, and if it is to preserve a sort of fractal self-similarity, it must refer to a reunification in human society. I don't think this is a stretch at all: we clearly see these three scales reflected in the myth when Isis institutes the mysteries [C8], explicitly linking the parts of Osiris (the universal) with the parts of Egypt (the societal) and with the parts of Man (the individual). (For a listing of which part is which, see E. A. Wallis Budge, Legends of the Gods p. 224 fn. 2). We also see this fractal self-similarity in the very structure of Egyptian architecture, as R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz discusses.

Therefore the pieces in which Set divides Osiris refer to the division of humanity into parts of whatever sort (regions, classes, professions, individuals, etc.), while Isis gathering them back into a whole refers to the organization of society in a "natural" fashion, according to the skills and abilities of each part of society, so that each might work towards the benefit of all. (Presumably, the specific number of fourteen refers to the major cult centers of Osiris; because each of these refers to a specific body part, and each body part has a particular function, it is plausible that there was once some formal association with certain professions or skills, which I can only guess at. I have conjectured that the specific number of fourteen may have a geometric mnemonic related to it; but that, too, is only a guess.) Such an ordering of society, like Plotinus tells us, causes society to mirror Mind as perfectly as possible, creating peace and leisure. Not only is this rewarding of itself, but freeing that part of humanity which is capable of reascent at a given time from animal concerns allows them to focus on spiritual concerns, which is represented by the fish eating Osiris's penis and Isis making and consecrating of a new one. Therefore, the cultivation and education of individual souls from the abundance produced by a civilized society is how Isis draws the essence of Osiris from the fragments and gives birth to Horus the Younger, those souls who have reached the point of reascent and have the freedom to be able to do so. Thus the universal becomes individual and the One becomes many.

I don't think this cultivation necessarily refers to an explicitly priestly class; Empedocles says of those who are drawing near to reascent:

εἰς δὲ τέλος μάντεις τε καὶ ὑμνόπολοι καὶ ἰητροί
καὶ πρόμοι ἀνθρώποισιν ἐπιχθονίοισι πέλονται·
ἔνθεν ἀναβλαστοῦσι θεοὶ τιμῇσι φέριστοι.

Finally they become prophets and hymn-singers and doctors
and leaders among men who dwell on earth;
thence they sprout up as most-exalted gods.

Plotinus speaks of lovers, aesthetes, and philosophers in a similar way. Presumably there are as many avenues for individuals to develop as there are individual souls, and this is why any organization of society must be done along "natural" lines by Isis (that is, by evaluation of each individual's talents, interests, and capacities), rather than forced by some other means of classism. To be honest, I really wonder about all this: our "leaders" are the most dangerous enemies of their nations, our "physicians" promote sickness rather than healing, our "singers" sing only the most vapid "poetry," our "philosophers" have taken a nosedive into nihilism, and so our society is almost the photographic negative of an ordered one; and yet, here I am, trying my very best to do as my angel bids, and they would not push me so if there were nothing to be gained from it. Indeed, I'd imagine that the making of a heaven-on-earth would prevent people from seeking that higher Heaven—after all, it is well said that "man's extremity is God's opportunity." So while it's clearly a good to have a society that reflects divinity as clearly as it can and we might wish to live in such a society, we should be careful what we wish for and trust that Providence knows what it is doing when it places us here. Still, we know so little about Egypt's material accomplishments even when they were literally set in stone—how much less can we know about its spiritual accomplishments, which leave no record behind? So I suppose I should give them the benefit of the doubt.

Either way, I think we see the exact same process in the Dionysus myth. Dionysus ("Zeus of Nysa," that is, the god of the upper world) is Osiris. The Titans are the separatory forces of the lower world ("matter"). I think Dionysus becoming fascinated by his reflection is a cute development of Set's beautiful box, showing Mind wishing to reflect itself in matter. Similarly, the boiling of Dionysus in water (the last of the roots) and roasting in fire (the first of the roots) is a cute description of the loss of Mind in matter and the restructuring of matter to form a reflection of Mind to form humanity, just as Zeus does from the ashes of the Titans. Athena is civilization, and her snatching away and restoration of Dionysus's heart is the structuring of civilization to reflect the order inherent in Mind as closely as possible. Apollo is Horus, and the giving of the pieces of Dionysus to Apollo indicates that, by so structuring society in an orderly manner, its parts—individual souls—can become as Apollo (who fell to Earth, served Admetus for a time, and reascended to heaven).

Another related myth is that of Attis and Kybele: Attis falling in love with a nymph is the same as Dionysus becoming fascinated with his reflection; leaving Kybele to live with her is the Mind's descent into matter; the cutting off of his penis is the turn from material concerns to spiritual concerns; and finally Attis returns to Kybele's side, that is, Mind reascends to heaven. Plutarch doesn't specify where Set scatters the pieces of Osiris, but since Isis is said to search up and down the Nile in a reed boat, I must suppose that the pieces are scattered beside the Nile, which is just the same as Attis lying by the Gallus ("Galaxy," i.e. Milky Way), indicating the scattering of Mind at the border of the material world now that matter can reflect Mind (however imperfectly).

Perhaps because of the apalling time in which we live, I've always found politics somewhere between distasteful and outright dangerous, and so I have paid very little attention to the political side of the philosophical tradition (and, indeed, have expressed my bewilderment at Plotinus's involvement in it). But there is a very important political side to it: the Pythagoreans were destroyed because of it, Plato's most acclaimed books concern themselves with it, Plotinus's great regret was his failure to implement it, Plethon's life work was its attempted restoration, etc. If my interpretation of the Osiris myth is correct—and I'm not the first to propose Plato got his politics from Heliopolis—it's clear why it is such an important thread woven through the tradition: is Plato's wish for a philosopher-king really any different from Egypt's (admittedly imperfect, but remarkably durable) example of a Horus-Pharaoh? I suppose I'll have to hold my nose and make a close reading of the Republic, Laws, Epinomis, and the remaining fragments of the Book of Laws one of these days...

I've focused on the myth itself and ignored all the really weird shit they say about the cults and festivals of Osiris, Dionysus, Attis, Baal, Adonis, and so on. It would take a book to do so and I'm not the one to write it, since I can't even make heads or tails of my own culture, let alone those of three thousand years ago! But let me at least spend a brief moment on an anecdote which I was reminded of lately: the story of Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great. If you're not familiar, Plutarch tells us a very silly story about her and her snaky cuddle-buddy in his Life of Alexander:

We are told that Philip, after being initiated into the mysteries of Samothrace at the same time with Olympias, he himself being still a youth and she an orphan child, fell in love with her and betrothed himself to her at once[. ... After the marriage,] a serpent was once seen lying stretched out by the side of Olympias as she slept, and we are told that this, more than anything else, dulled the ardour of Philip's attentions to his wife, so that he no longer came often to sleep by her side, either because he feared that some spells and enchantments might be practised upon him by her, or because he shrank from her embraces in the conviction that she was the partner of a superior being.

But concerning these matters there is another story to this effect: all the women of these parts were addicted to the Orphic rites and the orgies of Dionysus from very ancient times [...]. Now Olympias, who affected these divine possessions more zealously than other women, and carried out these divine inspirations in wilder fashion, used to provide the revelling companies with great tame serpents, which would often lift their heads from out the ivy and the mystic winnowing-baskets, or coil themselves about the wands and garlands of the women, thus terrifying the men.

However, after his vision, as we are told, Philip sent Chæron of Megalopolis to Delphi, by whom an oracle was brought him from Apollo, who bade him sacrifice to Zeus Amun and hold that god in greatest reverence, but told him he was to lose that one of his eyes which he had applied to the chink in the door when he espied the god, in the form of a serpent, sharing the couch of his wife.

(Philip lost his right eye a couple years later, during the siege of Methone.) This whole story is almost certainly completely false, but apparently, Alexander took it to heart, as Aulus Gellius (Attic Nights XIII iv, paraphrased) tells us:

Alexander had written a letter to his mother addressed as, "King Alexander, son of Zeus Amun, to his mother Olympias, greetings." Olympias replied, "My son, please be silent in such matters and do not slander me before Hera, for she exacts cruel vengeance upon her husband's paramours." This courteous reply from the wise and prudent woman was meant to dissuade her son from his foolish arrogance, stoked by his great successes in battle and the flattery of his courtiers, without herself earning his ire.

Snakes, which periodically shed their skin and so appear to become young again, are representative of immortality: they are therefore a fitting symbol of the mysteries, which teach that humans are essentially immortal and attempt to show them how they may attain to higher Life, which is, in fact, the meaning behind the myth of Cadmus and Harmonia being turned into snakes (by Dionysus, no less!) before being led to Elysium (cf. Pseudo-Apollodorus, Library III v).

How many initiates—to say nothing of the masses!—attain to that degree of understanding, though? It is no wonder, especially given the association of the mysteries with maenads and orgies and phallic idols, that all sorts of silly stories concerning snakes crop up. Presumably, if Olympias was known for her wisdom then she made something of her initiations!

But the reason I mention all this (besides the story being amusing) is because it made me remember something about Apollo's own Revealer of the Mysteries:

Of Plotinus's last moments, Eustochius has given me an account. He himself was staying at Puteoli and was late in arriving. When he at last came, Plotinus said: "I have been a long time waiting for you: I am striving to give back the Divine in myself to the Divine in the All." As he spoke a snake crept under the bed on which he lay and slipped away into a hole in the wall; at the same moment Plotinus died.

(Porphyry, Life of Plotinus II.)

The snake should have been a hint: Plotinus never died! Like Cadmus, he merely shed his skin.

Weapons are ominous tools.
They are abhorred by all creatures.
Anyone who follows the Way shuns them.

(Laozi, Tao Te Ching XXXI)

So, in times where the use of money is weaponized...

A soldier named Nobushige came to Hakuin, and asked: "Is there really a paradise and a hell?"

"Who are you?" inquired Hakuin.

"I am a samurai," the warrior replied.

"You, a soldier!" exclaimed Hakuin. "What kind of ruler would have you as his guard? Your face looks like that of a beggar."

Nobushige became so angry that he began to draw his sword, but Hakuin continued: "So you have a sword! Your weapon is probably much too dull to cut off my head."

As Nobushige drew his sword Hakuin remarked: "Here open the gates of hell!"

At these words the samurai, perceiving the master's discipline, sheathed his sword and bowed.

"Here open the gates of paradise," said Hakuin.

(Nyogen Senzaki, 101 Zen Stories LVII "The Gates of Paradise.")

Alone in immunity from magic is he who, though drawn by the alien parts of his total being, withholds his assent to their standards of worth, recognizing the good only where his authentic self sees and knows it, neither drawn nor pursuing, but tranquilly possessing and so never charmed away. [...] Thus this universe of ours is a wonder of power and wisdom, everything by a noiseless road coming to pass according to a law which none may elude—which the base man never conceives though it is leading him, all unknowingly, to that place in the All where his lot must be cast—[but] which the just man knows, and, knowing, sets out to the place he must, understanding, even as he begins the journey, where he is to be housed at the end, and having the good hope that he will be with gods.

(Plotinus, Enneads IV vi "Problems of the Soul (2)" §44–5.)

If you're losing the game, try instead playing the different game that is one level up.

(Mark Dominus.)

Have you ever played Nicky Case's little explanatory toy The Evolution of Trust? If you haven't, you should.

I think Case makes an error, by equating the Golden Rule with the "tit-for-tat" strategy; the Golden Rule isn't about treating others the way you are treated, it is rather about treating others the way you wish to be treated. Therefore, the Golden Rule is more of a mirror: if one is kind, then the Golden Rule is the "Always Cooperate" strategy, while if one is cynical, then the Golden Rule is the "Always Cheat" strategy.

As Case demonstrates, "Always Cooperate" never seems to survive. (And is destroyed all the more rapidly in times like these where "Always Cheat" is on the ascendant!) And yet, we try to be good and kind anyway. Why is that?

Is it because "Always Cooperate" is the strategy of angels? If one wishes to be among them, it makes sense to practice in preparation...

Although I investigated the ages of Hesiod and Homer as exactly as possible, I take no pleasure in writing about it, since I know that other people are captious, especially the appointed "experts" on epic poetry in my time.

[Pausanias, Descriptions of Greece IX xxx 3, as translated by Glenn W. Most]

Good to see that some things never change.

Heaven and earth are indifferent, and regard all things as straw dogs.
[Similarly,] the wise man is indifferent, and regards people as straw dogs.
Is not the space between heaven and earth like a bellows?
It is empty, but doesn't lack; it moves, but doesn't change for all its coming and going.
Much talk counts for little, and is not in keeping with guarding the center.

(Laozi, Tao Te Ching V, as adapted by yours truly.)

[A "straw dog" is a temporary icon, used in religious ritual and discarded afterwards.]

For who would readily agree that the earth has always existed when historians assure us that the development and improvement and even the discovery of many things are of recent date, and when in the memories and tales of the ancients we find crude men, unkempt rustics, not far removed from wild beasts in their savagery, who did not use the food that we enjoy, but subsisting at first on nuts and berries, only recently began to look for nourishment from the plower furrow; and when we have such faith in the beginning of the world and of the human race itself that we believe that the Golden Age was the first and that subsequent ages degenerated through the baser metals to the last Age of Iron?

And, lest we seem to rely entirely upon the authority of legends, who would not conclude that the earth began at a definite time not so very far in the past when even Greek history does not record salient events more than two thousand years ago? [...] If the world was in the beginning or, as philosophers would have it, before the beginning, why, in the passage of countless ages, was the culture that we now enjoy not discovered? And the knowledge of writing, the sole means of preserving the past? Why, finally, did so many types of experience come so late to some nations, witness the Gauls learning about the vine and the raising of olives at the time when our nation was already fully developed, and other peoples still ignorant of many things that have proved boons to us?

(Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio X)

Solon said that when he travelled [to Egypt] he was held in great esteem amongst them; moreover, when he was questioning such of their priests as were most versed in ancient lore about their early history, he discovered that neither he himself nor any other Greek knew anything at all, one might say, about such matters. And on one occasion, when he wished to draw them on to discourse on ancient history, he attempted to tell them the most ancient of our traditions, [...] whereupon one of the priests, a prodigiously old man, said, "O Solon, Solon, you Greeks are always children: there is no such thing as an old Greek."

And on hearing this he asked, "What do you mean?"

And the priest replied, "You are young in soul, every one of you. For therein you possess not a single belief that is ancient and derived from old tradition, nor yet one science that is hoary with age. And this is the cause thereof: there have been and there will be many and divers destructions of mankind, of which the greatest are by fire and water, and lesser ones by countless other means. [... Because of these,] your people and the others are but newly equipped, every time, with letters and all such arts as civilized States require and when, after the usual interval of years, like a plague, the flood from heaven comes sweeping down afresh upon your people, it leaves none of you but the unlettered and uncultured, so that you become young as ever, with no knowledge of all that happened in old times in this land or in your own."

(Critias, as quoted by Plato, Timæus 21e ff.)

We, of course, for all our technological sophistication are no better off than the Greeks were.

Geoffrey Steadman, in his introduction to his didactic Greek edition of the Symposium, says,

The role of memory and oral history in the telling of the Symposium becomes even more meaningful when we realize that all the party’s guests were real Athenians whom Plato’s contemporary readers could place at a significant moment in the recent past. Imagine that instead of the Symposium we were reading about a nightlong seminar on the nature of love attended by the statesman Robert Kennedy, singer Mick Jagger, theologian Paul Tillich, actor Rock Hudson, minister and activist Martin Luther King, philosopher Michel Foucault and General William Westmoreland on the eve of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution in 1964. [...] Needless to say, there would be much more on our minds than the discussion of love. Our attention would turn not only to the topic of love but also to the past and often tragic, future lives of the speakers, their occupations, and the relationship between these figures and the view of love that each espouses.

Sometimes the gulf between the previous generation and my own seems unbreachable, as of the people and events Steadman lists, only one was familiar to me. (My wife didn't do much better, either, so it's not just me!) So I don't think his point holds: in trying to make the events of the distant past more relatable, he has only served to distance the recent past, since in many ways, the almost-archetypal characters of Socrates and Alcibiades are infinitely more relatable than those of the bizarre clown world of the 20th century.

A lot of learning the ancient Greek language is inseparable from understanding the ancient Greek culture: for example, the word for "buy" is related to the word "agora;" the word for "sex" is related to the name "Aphrodite;" the word for "quarrel" is related to the name "Eris." If you don't understand what the agora, or Aphrodite, or Eris meant to somebody back then, then you can't understand the words: the agora wasn't merely a marketplace and Aphrodite isn't merely the archetype of sexuality—these are larger concepts, square pegs that don't fit into the round holes of modern English, and so simply saying that "ἀγοράζω" equals "buy" is a gross trivialization.

I think that mystical experience is like that, whether it be channeled writing (e.g. the G. Vale Owen scripts) or direct gnosis (e.g. Emmanuel Swedenborg's books) or whatever. The spiritual worlds are vast, and to write them down in words is impossible. Human language describes human experiences, and so it is inevitable that we don't have words for super-human experiences; but more than that, any translation from spiritual experience to human experience has to map not only to words but to cultural constructs that are encoded in those words.

A good example of this is that I find a lot of written mystical texts in English to be useless, because the worldview of English-speaking cultures is fundamentally a Christian worldview; the language presupposes this, and the assumptions are baked in to it. So if I am reading about, say, Lorna Byrne's mystical experiences, I have to account for a double-translation: she is translating her spiritual experiences into a Christian worldview just to merely be able to put it into words, and so when I read it, I need to not merely translate the words to experiences, but I need to try and generalize from her Christian model to try and get to the bigger reality that is hinted from it (since I am not a Christian and do not, cannot, subscribe to that worldview). But this is impossible: if translation is treason, then a translation of a translation is beyond treason, it is trash. If the original is like a live flesh-and-blood person, a translation is like a mere photograph, and a translation of a translation is more like a Picasso.

And let it not be thought I am just picking on Christianity here: we have many records of Greek mystical experiences, and they are likewise fraught. One simply can't understand the spiritual worlds by using human models.

Let me contrive a little example: very often, accounts of what heaven is like say that people go to various buildings and do God's work of making things or helping people or what have you. This strikes me as a very industrial, Western view of how a person in heaven lives, where one goes to a place and does a particular, specialized task for some kind of reward. Yes, there must certainly "work" of a sort in the spiritual world, but I can't imagine heaven to have anything remotely related to the "work" we do here on earth! I could very easily see somebody from a different culture treating heaven as constant sex—because isn't part of sex to know something completely, without barriers? And isn't that the kind of knowledge one has of things in heaven? This is not something that can be taken too literally, of course—there are no bodies in heaven!—but as an analogy, a translation of an experience, I can see it being valid. But of course if one said such a thing in an English-speaking context, even the few who are inclined to read of mystical experiences would decry the supposed mystic as speaking strictly in terms of wish fulfillment.

If one walks their own path to divinity—and so many of us here do, I think; not for nothing does Manly P. Hall call it "the way of the lonely ones"—then they are necessarily withdrawing themselves from the cultural context in which they are situated. And if one does so, then no account of spirituality can possibly fit them: it will always be lost in translation. The only experience that can fit into an isolated, idiosyncratic worldview is one's own; and so we must develop our spiritual eyes to see for ourselves.