Western European stream·The Great Initiates·Orpheus: The Mysteries of Dionysus

Source context

Theme

Orphic initiation and the Dionysian mysteries as vehicles for transmitting soul-knowledge through ancient Greek culture

Soul-faculty

Sentient Soul

Steiner

not engaged in the GA corpus

Cross-tradition

• Greek mystery tradition (Dionysian rites)The sparagmos and omophagia rituals of Dionysian cult structurally parallel the death-and-resurrection sequence central to Orphic initiation, through which the soul was said to recover its divine origin from Titanic encrustation.
• Neoplatonism (Plotinus, Proclus)Neoplatonic commentators read the Orphic theogony as encoding the soul's descent through successive hypostases into matter and its ascent back to the One — a structural cross-tradition congruence with Schuré's reading of Orpheus as revealer of cosmic soul-evolution.
• Egyptian mysteries (Osiris cycle)The dismemberment and reconstitution of Dionysus in Orphic mythology shows cross-tradition congruence with the Osiris myth's logic of death, scattering, and reconstitution as the archetypal pattern of initiated consciousness.

Orpheus: The Mysteries of Dionysus

The Mysteries of Dionysus

How they toss about in the immense universe as they whirl and seek each other, these myriad souls which burst forth from the great soul of the World! They fall from planet to planet, and in the abyss mourn the forgotten homeland. . . . They are your tears, Dionysus . . . O Great Spirit, O Divine Liberator, take your daughters back into your heart of light.

—Orphic Fragment.

"Eurydice! O divine light!" cried the dying Orpheus. "Eurydice!" moaned the seven cords of his Lyre, as they broke. And his tossing head, carried away forever on the river of the ages, still calls "Eurydice! Eurydice!"

—Legend of Orpheus'

25Prehistoric Greece -- The Bacchantes -- Appearance of Orpheus
In the sanctuaries of Apollo which possessed the Orphic tradition, a mysterious festival was celebrated at the vernal equinox. This was the time when the narcissus bloomed again near the fountain of Castalia. The tripods and the lyres of the temple vibrated of their own accord, and the invisible god was said to return to the country of the Hyperboreans in a chariot drawn by swans. Then the great priestess, dressed as a Muse and crowned with laurel, her forehead bound with sacred bands, sang before the initiates The Birth of Orpheus, the son of Apollo and of a priestess of god. The Muse called upon the soul of Orpheus, father of mystics, musical savior of men. She sang of sovereign Orpheus, immortal and thrice-crowned, in hell, on earth and in heaven, a star upon his forehead, walking among the constellations and the gods. The mystical chant of the priestess of Delphi referred to one of the many secrets kept by the priests of Apollo, unknown to the masses. Orpheus was the animating genius of sacred Greece, the quickener of its divine soul. His seven-stringed lyre embraces the universe. Each string corresponds to a mood of the human soul and contains the law of a science and an art. We have lost the key to its full harmony, but the different modes have not ceased vibrating in our ears. The theurgic and Dionysian impulse which Orpheus knew how to communicate to Greece, was transmitted by Greece to all Europe. Our age no longer believes in the beauty of life. However, if in spite of all, it maintains a deep recollection, a secret, invincible hope, it owes the latter to this divine, inspired one. Let us hail him as the great initiator of Greece, the ancestor of poetry and music, conceived as revealers of eternal truth. But before reconstructing the story of Orpheus out of the very heart of the tradition of the sanctuaries, let us describe Greece at the time of his appearance. The latter took place in the age of Moses, five centuries before Homer, thirteen centuries before Christ. India was sinking into its Kali-Yuga, into its age of darkness, and manifested no more than a shadow of its former splendor. Through the tyranny of Babylon, Assyria had unleashed upon the world the scourge of anarchy and now continued to tread Asia underfoot. By means of the science of her priests and the strength of her Pharaohs, Egypt might have resisted this universal collapse, but her activities stopped at the Euphrates and the Mediterranean. In the desert Israel was to raise the principle of the male God and of divine unity through the thundering voice of Moses. But earth had not yet heard its reverberations. Greece was deeply divided by religion and politics. The mountainous peninsula, extending its arms into the Mediterranean and garlanded by islands, was populated for thousands of years by a branch of the white race akin to the Getes, the Scythians and the primitive Celts. This race had mingled with and experienced the changes of all previous civilizations. Colonies from India, Egypt and Phoenicia had established themselves upon its shores, covering its promontories and valleys with people, activities and manifold divinities. With sails unfurled, fleets passed beneath the legs of the Colossus of Rhodes, astride the two piers of its port. The Cycladic Sea, where on clear days the navigator always sees some isle or shore against the horizon, was furrowed by the red prows of the Phoenicians and the black hulls of the pirates of Lydia. These vessels carried the riches of Asia and Africa: ivory, decorated pottery, cloth from Syria, golden vases, velvet and pearls, and often women, snatched from some wild coast. Through these mixtures of races was formed a flowing and harmonious language, a mixture of primitive Celtic, Zend, Sanskrit and Phoenician. This language which painted the majesty of the ocean under the name of Poseidon, and the serenity of the sky under that of Ouranos, imitated all the voices of nature, from the chirping of birds to the roar of the storm. It was multi-colored, like its deep blue sea, with changing skies; it was of many sounds, like the waves which murmur in its gulfs or dash themselves upon its innumerable reefs -- poluphlosboio Thalassa, as Homer says. Accompanying these merchants or pirates were often priests, who directed and commanded them as masters. In their boats they jealously hid a wooden image of a god. Doubtless the image was crudely carved, and the sailors of that time had the same fetishism for it that many of our mariners have for their Madonna. But their priests, nevertheless, were in possession of certain sciences, and the divinity they carried from their temple into a foreign land represented for them a concept of nature, a group of laws, a civil and religious organization. For in those days, all spiritual life stemmed from the temples. Juno was worshipped at Argos, Artemis in Arcadia; in Paphos and Corinth the Phoenician Astarte had become Aphrodite, born out of the foam of the waves. Several initiators had appeared in Attica. An Egyptian colony had brought to Eleusis the cult of Isis in the form of Demeter, Ceres, mother of the gods. Between the Hymettian mountain and the Pentelicus, Erechteus had established the cult of a virgin goddess, daughter of the blue sky, friend of the olive tree and of wisdom. During the invasions, at the first sound of alarm, the population took refuge on the Acropolis, pressing about the goddess as about a living victory. A few male cosmogonic gods ruled over the local divinities. But, consigned to the high mountains and eclipsed by the brilliant procession of feminine divinities, they had little influence. The solar god, the Delphic Apollo," already existed, but as yet he played only an obscure role. There were priests of Zeus, the Most High, at the foot of the snowy summits of Ida, on the heights of Arcadia and beneath the oaks of Dodona. But the people preferred the goddesses who represented the power of nature, whether seductive or terrible, rather than the mysterious, universal god. The underground rivers of Arcadia, the mountain caverns, descending into the very bowels of the earth, the volcanic eruptions in the isles of the Aegean Sea, had brought the Greeks to the cult of mysterious earth forces. Thus, in the heights and in the depths, nature was felt, feared and venerated. But since all these divinities had neither a social center nor a religious synthesis, they engaged in desperate wars among themselves. The enemy temples, the rival cities, the people divided by ritual, by the ambition of priests and kings, hated each other, were jealous of each other, fighting each other in bloody battles. But beyond Greece was wild, rugged Thrace. To the north, chains of mountains, covered with giant oaks and topped with rocks, followed behind each other in waves, spread out in enormous circles, or entangled in knotty massifs. The winds from the south beat upon their grassy sides and often storm clouds swept over their summits. Shepherds of the valleys and warriors of the plains belonged to this strong white race, to the great stock of the Dorians of Greece. This male race par excellence is evidenced in the beauty of its sharpness of features and strength of character. Its ugliness appears in the frightfulness and impressive quality that is found in the head of the Medusa and the ancient Gorgons. Like Egypt, Israel, Etrurua and all those ancient peoples who received their organization from the Mysteries, Greece had its sacred geography, in which each area became the symbol of a purely spiritual and supraterrestrial region of the soul. Why was Thrace" always considered by the Greeks as the holy land par excellence, the land of light, the real homeland of the Muses? It is because these high mountains bore the oldest sanctuaries of Kronos, of Zeus and of Ouranos. From them had descended in Eumolpic rhythms, poetry, laws and sacred art. The legendary poets of Thrace give evidence of this. The names Thamyris, Linos and Amphion correspond, perhaps, to real people, but above all they personify, according to the language of the temples, so many kinds of poetry. Each of them celebrates the victory of one theology over another. In the temples of that time history was written only allegorically. The individual was nothing, the doctrine and the work, everything. Thamyris, who sang of the war of the Titans and was blinded by the Muses, announces the defeat of cosmogonic poetry by new modes. Linos, who introduced the melancholy songs of Asia into Greece and was killed by Hercules, reveals the invasion into Thrace by a moving, sad, sensuous poetry which the virile mind of the Dorians of the north at first rejected. At the same time this means the victory of a lunar over a solar cult. On the other hand, Amphion, who, according to allegorical legend put the stones in movement with his songs and built temples with the sounds of his lyre, represents the plastic force that solar doctrine and orthodox Dorian poetry exercised upon the arts of Greece and upon all Hellenic civilization." How different is the light with which Orpheus shines! He beams across the ages with the personal light of a creative genius, whose masculine soul vibrated with love for the Eternal Feminine, and in its lowest depths that Eternal Feminine, who lives and throbs in a triple form in nature, humanity and Heaven, responded. The worship of the sanctuaries, the tradition of the initiates, the cry of the poets, the voice of the philosophers, -- and more than all the others, his work, an organic Greece, testify to his living reality! In those times, Thrace was involved in an intense and heated struggle. The solar and lunar cults were fighting for supremacy. This war between the worshippers of the sun and moon was not, as one might believe, a vain battle between two superstitions. These two cults represented two theologies, two cosmogonies, two religions and two absolutely opposite social organizations. The Ouranian and solar cults had their temples in lofty and mountainous places, with priests and strict laws. The lunar cults held sway in the forests and the deep valleys; they had women as priestesses, with voluptuous rites, a chaotic practice of occult arts and a love of orgiastic excitement. It was a war to the death between the priests of the sun and the priestesses of the moon. It was a battle of the sexes, an ancient, inevitable battle, open or secret, but eternally waged between the male and female principles, between man and woman. Just as the perfect fusion of masculine and feminine constitutes the very essence and mystery of divinity, so the balance of these two principles alone can produce great civilizations. Everywhere in Thrace as in Greece, the male gods, cosmogonic and solar, had been consigned to the high mountains and desert places. The people preferred the enticing procession of female divinities, who called forth dangerous passions and the blind forces of nature. These cults attributed the feminine sex to the supreme divinity. Terrible abuses began to result from this. Among the Thracians the priestesses of the moon or of the threefold Hecate had proved their supremacy in appropriating the old cult of Bacchus and in giving him a bloody and dreadful character. As a sign of their victory they had taken the name Bacchantes, as if to mark their mastery, the supreme reign of woman, her domination of man. Magicians, seducers and bloody sacrificers of human victims, they had their sanctuaries in wild and remote valleys. By what dark attraction, what burning curiosity, were men and women attracted to these solitudes of luxurious vegetation? Naked figures, lascivious dances in the depth of the forest . . . then laughter, a great outcry .. . and a hundred Bacchantes threw themselves upon the stranger and subdued him. He had to swear submission to them and give himself to their rituals, or perish. The Bacchantes tamed panthers and lions, which they displayed in their festivals. At night, their arms entwined with serpents, they knelt before the threefold Hecate; then, in frenzied dances they invoked Bacchus underground, the double-sexed one with a bull's face."® But woe to the stranger, woe to the priest of Jupiter or of Apollo, who came to spy on them! He was torn to pieces. The primitive Bacchantes were the Druidesses of Greece. Many Thracian leaders remained faithful to the old male cults. But the Bacchantes had found their way to some of the Thracian kings, who added their barbaric customs to the luxury and refinements of Asia. The Bacchantes had seduced them with voluptuousness and conquered them with terror. Thus the gods had divided Thrace into two enemy camps. But the priests of Jupiter and Apollo, on their lonely summits, haunted by thunder, found themselves powerless against Hecate, who was gaining strength in the burning valleys and who began to threaten the very altars of the sons of light. At that time a young man of royal race and wondrous appeal had appeared in Thrace. He was said to be the son of a priestess of Apollo. His melodious voice had a strange charm. He spoke of the gods in a new rhythm, and seemed inspired. His blond hair, pride of the Dorians, fell in golden waves over his shoulders and the music which flowed from his lips lent a gentle, sad contour to the corners of his mouth. His deep blue eyes shone with power, sweetness and magic. The fierce Thracians fled before his glance, but the women versed in the art of charms said that his blue eyes combined the arrows of the sun and the kisses of the moon. Even the Bacchantes, curious about his beauty, often slunk around him like panthers in love, proud of their dark skins, and smiled at his incomprehensible words. Suddenly this young man, who was called the son of Apollo, disappeared. He was said to be dead, to have descended into hell. However, he had secretly fled to Samothrace, then to Egypt, where he asked shelter from the priests of Memphis. Having gone through their Mysteries, he returned at the end of twenty years, bearing an initiation-name which he had acquired as a result of his ordeals, and had received from his teachers as a sign of his mission. He was now called Orpheus of Arpha," which means the one who heals with light. The oldest sanctuary of Jupiter then arose on Mount Kaoukaion. Once its hierophants had been great pontiffs. From the top of this mountain, protected from unexpected attacks, they had reigned over all of Thrace. But since the lower divinities had achieved supremacy, their followers were few and their temple was almost abandoned. The priests of Mount Kaoukaion welcomed the initiate from Egypt as a savior. With his knowledge and his enthusiasm, Orpheus assumed the leadership of the majority of the Thracians, completely changed the cult of Bacchus and subdued the Bacchantes. Soon his influence penetrated into all the sanctuaries of Greece. It was he who established the supremacy of Zeus in Thrace and that of Apollo in Delphi, where he laid the foundations of the council of the Amphyctions, which became the social unit of Greece. Finally, through the creation of the Mysteries, he formed the religious soul of his country. For from the height of initiation, he blended the religion of Zeus with that of Dionysus in a universal concept. The initiates received the pure light of sublime truth through his teachings, and this same light reached the people in a more tempered, but no less beneficial form under the veil of poetry and enchanting festivals. In this way Orpheus became pontiff of Thrace, high-priest of the Olympian Zeus, and the revelator of the heavenly Dionysus to the initiates. Notes for this chapter:

45According to the ancient tradition of the Thracians, poetry had been invented by Olen. This name
means Universal Being in Phoenician. Apollo has the same root: Ap Olen or Ap Wholen means Universal Father. Originally, in Delphi the Universal Being was worshipped under the name Olen. The cult of Apollo was introduced by a reforming priest under the impetus of the doctrine of the solar Word, which then was spreading through all the sanctuaries of India and Egypt. This reformer identified the Universal Father with his double manifestation, hyperphysical light and the visible sun. But this reform was scarcely known outside the walls of the sanctuary. It was Orpheus who gave new power to the solar Word of Apollo by reviving it and vitalizing it with the Mysteries of Dionysius. (See Fabre d'Olivet, Golden Verses of Pythagoras, trnsl. by Redfield, Putnam's N.Y. 1925.)

46TRAKIA, according to Fabre d'Olivet is derived from the Phoenician Rakhiwe, meaning ethereal
space or firmament. For the poets and initiates of Greece like Pindar, Aeschylus or Plato, the name Thrace had a symbolic sense and meant the land of pure doctrine and sacred poetry which stems from it. This word therefore had a philosophical and historical meaning for them. Philosophically it designated an intellectual sphere, the group of doctrines and traditions which trace the origin of the world from a divine intelligence. Historically this name recalled the country and people where Dorian doctrine and poetry, that vigorous offshoot of the ancient Ayran spirit had first developed to flowering in Greece through the sanctuary of Apollo. The use of this kind of symbolism is proved by subsequent history. At Delphi was a group of Thracian priests who were the guardians of the high doctrine. The Council of the Amphyctions was formerly defended by a Thracian guard, that is, a guard of initiate warriors. The tyranny of Sparta suppressed this incorruptible army and replaced it with mercenaries of brute force. Later the verb "to thracize" was applied ironically to those faithful to the former doctrine.

47Strabo confirms positively that ancient poetry was only the language of allegory. Denys of
Halicarnassus confirms this, stating that the mysteries of nature and the most sublime concepts of morality have been hidden beneath a veil. Therefore it is not at all a mere metaphor when ancient poetry was called the Language of the Gods. This secret magic meaning which makes for its power and charm is contained in its very name. The majority of linguists have derived the word poetry from the Greek verb poiein, to make, to create. This is simple etymology, and is very natural on the surface, but hardly conforms with the sacred language of the temples, from which primitive poetry came. It is more logical to recognize with Fabre d'Olivet that Poiesis comes from the Phoenician phohe (mouth, voice, language, speech) and from ish (superior being, originating being, figuratively: God). The Etruscan Aes or Aesar, Gallic Aes, Scandinavian Ase, Copit Os (Lord), Egyptian Osiris have the same root. (See also, Wadler, Arnold: One Language, Source of All Tongues, New York, 1948 -- Ed.)

48Bacchus with a bull's face is found in the 29th Orphic Hymn. It is a recollection of a former cult
which in no way belongs to the pure tradition of Orpheus. For the latter completely purified and transfigured the popular Bacchus into the celestial Dionysius, the symbol of the divine Spirit which evolves throughout the kingdoms of nature. We again find the infernal Bacchus of the sorceress Bacchantes in the figure of Satan with a bull's face which the witches of the Middle Ages invoked and worshipped in their nocturnal revels. This is the celebrated Baphomet, of which the Church accused the Knights Templars of being a sect, in order to discredit them. (See Henry Milman: History of Latin Christianity, on the Knights Templars. -- Ed.)

49A Phoenician word, composed of aur, light, and rophae, healing.

26The Temple of Jupiter
Near the source of the Ebro rises Mount Kaoukaion. Thick oak forests mantle its sides and a circle of rocks and Cyclopean stones crown its summit. For thousands of years this has been a sacred mountain. Pelasgians, Celts, Scythians and Getes had driven one another out and in turn came here to worship their various gods. But is it not always the same God that man seeks when he climbs so high? If not, why does he so painstakingly build a home in this region of thunder and winds? A temple of Jupiter now rises in the center of the holy site, massive and unapproachable like a fortress. At the entrance stands a peristyle of four Dorian columns, its enormous shafts outlined against a dark portico. At the zenith the sky is calm, but the storm still howls over the mountains of Thrace, which extend their valleys and peaks in the distance, -- a black ocean churned up by the tempest and streaked with lightning. It is the hour of sacrifice. The priests of Kaoukaion perform this ritual by fire only. They descend the steps of the temple and light the aromatic wood offering with a torch from the sanctuary. Then the pontiff leaves the temple. Clothed in white linen like the others, he wears a crown of myrtle and cypress. He carries an ebony scepter with an ivory head, and wears a golden belt upon which crystals flash their dark lights, symbols of a mysterious royalty. This is Orpheus. He leads a disciple, a child of Delphi, by the hand. Pale, trembling and enraptured, the pupil awaits the words of the Great Inspired One, echoing the Mysteries. Orpheus sees this, and to reassure the neophyte, chosen by his warm heart, he gently puts his arm around his shoulders. His eyes smile, but suddenly they are aflame. And while down below the priests move around the altar and sing the hymn of fire, Orpheus solemnly tells the beloved the mystic words of initiation, which rise from the depths of his heart like a divine fluid. These are the winged words of Orpheus to the young disciple: "Withdraw deep within yourself in order to lift yourself to the Principle of things, to the Great Triad which flames in the immaculate ether. Consume your body with the fire of your thought; detach yourself from matter like the flame from the wood which it devours. Then your spirit will ascend into the pure ether of Eternal Causes as the eagle rises to Jupiter's throne. "I shall reveal to you the secret of the worlds, the soul of nature, the essence of God. Hear first the great mystery: A single Being rules in the deep sky and in the abyss of earth, the thundering Zeus, the ethereal Zeus. His are profound counsel, powerful hate and delightful love. He rules in the depths of earth and in the heights of the starry sky. He is the Breath of things, the untamed fire, eternal Male and Female, a King, a Power, a god, a Grand Master! "Jupiter is divine Husband and Wife, Man and Woman, Father and Mother. From their sacred marriage, from their everlasting union, unceasingly come fire and water, earth and ether, night and day, the proud Titans, the changeless gods and the floating seed of men. "The loves of heaven and earth are not known to the uninitiated. The mysteries of husband and wife are unveiled only to divine men. But I wish to state what is true. A little while ago the thunder shook these rocks; lightning fell like living fire and a rolling flame, and the echoes of the mountains roared with joy. But you, you were trembling, not knowing whence this fire comes nor where it strikes. It is the male fire, the seed of Zeus, the creative fire. It comes from the heart and brain of Jupiter; it moves in all beings. When lightning falls, it bursts from his right hand. But we, its priests, know its essence; we avoid and sometimes direct its shafts. "And now, look at the firmament. See that shining circle of constellations over which the filmy veil of the Milky Way, the dust of suns and worlds, is thrown! Behold Orion flaming, Gemini scintillating, the Lyre shining! That is the body of the divine wife, who is revolving in celestial harmony to the songs of the husband. Look with the eyes of the spirit, and you will see her head inclined, her arms extended, and you will lift her veil, strewn with stars! "Jupiter is both the divine husband and wife. That is the first Mystery. "But now, child of Delphi, prepare yourself for the second initiation. Tremble, weep, rejoice, worship! For your spirit is about to plunge into the burning zone, where the great Demiurge unites soul and world in the cup of life. Upon drinking from this intoxicating chalice, all beings forget the divine sojourn and descend into the painful abyss of incarnation. "Zeus is the great Demiurge. Dionysus is his son, his Word made manifest. Dionysus, radiant spirit, living intelligence, was the splendor of his father's habitation, the eternal palace of ether. One day as he viewed the depths of the heavens through the constellations, he saw reflected in the azure abyss his own image, extending its arms to him. Fascinated by this beautiful phantom, enamored with his double, he hastened to grasp it. But the image constantly fled before him. Finally he found himself in a shadowy, perfumed valley, enjoying the delightful breezes which caressed his body. In a grotto he saw Persephone. Maia, the beautiful weaver, was weaving a veil, upon which one could see pictures of all beings moving to and fro. He stopped before the divine virgin, dumb with rapture. At that moment, the haughty Titans and the free Titanides saw him. The former were jealous of his beauty, and the latter, mad with passion, threw themselves upon him like the furious elements, and tore him to pieces. Then, distributing his limbs among themselves, they boiled them in water. His heart they buried. Jupiter struck the Titans with thunderbolts, and Minerva carried the heart of Dionysus away with her into the ether. There it became a glowing sun. But from the smoke of Dionysus' body came souls of men, ascending toward heaven. Once the pale spirits have rejoined the flaming heart of the god, they will flame like torches, and Dionysus will be revived, more alive than ever, in the heights of the empyrean. "This is the Mystery of the death of Dionysus. Now listen to the Mystery of his resurrection. Men are the flesh and blood of Dionysus; unhappy men are the scattered members, which seek one another by becoming snared in crime and hate, in pain and love, through thousands of lives. The burning heat of the earth, the abyss of the lower powers, forever attract them nearer to this gulf, always tearing them asunder. But we, the initiates, who know what is above and what is below, are the saviors of souls, the Hermes of men. Like magnets we attract them to us, ourselves in turn attracted to the gods. Thus, by means of heavenly incantations we reestablish the living body of the Divinity. We make the heavens weep and the earth rejoice, and like precious jewels we bear in our hearts the tears of all beings, in order to change them into smiles. God dies in us, and in us he is reborn." Thus Orpheus spoke. The disciple of Delphi knelt before his master, his arms raised in a gesture of supplication. And the pontiff of Jupiter raised his hand above his head, as he spoke these words of consecration: "May Ineffable Zeus and Dionysus, three times revelator, -- in hell, on earth and in heaven-be kind to your youth, and may he pour into your heart the knowledge of the gods." Then the initiate left the peristyle of the temple and went to throw storax on the fire of the altar, calling three times upon thunderous Zeus. The priests moved in a circle around him, singing a hymn. Deep in thought, the pontiff-king had remained beneath the portico, his arm resting upon a stele. The disciple returned to him. "The way leading upward to the gods is rough," said Orpheus, who seemed to answer inner voices rather than his disciple. "A flower-strewn path, next a steep incline, and finally rocks, illumined by lightning flashes, with infinity everywhere. This is the destiny of the seer and prophet on earth! My child, continue on the flower-strewn paths of the plain, and do not seek to go beyond them!" "My thirst increases as you quench it," said the young initiate. "You have taught me about the essence of the gods. But tell me, great master of the Mysteries, the one inspired by divine Eros, shall I ever be able to see them?" "With the eyes of the spirit," said the pontiff of Jupiter, "but not with those of the body. As yet you know how to see only with the latter. You must undergo long tests or great suffering in order to open the inner eyes." "You alone know how to open them, Orpheus! With you, what can I fear?" "Do you wish to attempt it? Listen then! -- In Thessaly, in the enchanted valley of Tempe rises a mystic temple, closed to the uninitiated. It is there that Dionysus shows himself to the mystics and seers. In one year from now I shall invite you to his festival. Plunging you into a magic sleep, I shall open your eyes to the divine world. Until then, let your life be virtuous, your soul spotless. For truly the light of the gods frightens the weak and destroys the profaners! "But come into my house. I shall give you the book you will need for your preparation." The master and the Delphic disciple returned to the interior of the temple. Orpheus led the pupil into the great cella which was set aside for him. There an ever-burning Egyptian lamp, held by a winged genius fashioned of forged metal, glowed. Locked in coffers of scented cedar were many papyrus scrolls, inscribed in Egyptian hieroglyphs and Phoenician characters, as well as books written in the Greek language by Orpheus himself. These contained his magic wisdom and his secret doctrine." Master and disciple conversed in the cella for the greater part of the night. Notes for this chapter:

50Among the numerous lost books which the Orphic writers of Greece attributed to Orpheus was
the Argonautics which was concerned with the great Hermetic work; Demetriad, a poem on the mother of the gods, to which a Cosmogony corresponded; the Holy Songs of Bacchus or The pure Spirit, which has as its complement a Theogony, not to mention other works such as The Veil or The Network of Souls, on the art of the Mysteries and rituals; The Book of Mutations, on chemistry and alchemy; The Corybantes, on terrestrial mysteries and earthquakes; the Anemoscopy, on the science of atmospheres, a natural and magical botany, etc....

27A Dionysan Festival in the Valley of Tempe
We are in Thessaly, in the cool valley of Tempe.™ The holy night dedicated by Orpheus to the Mysteries of Dionysus has come. Led by one of the servants of the temple, the disciple of Delphi walks in a narrow, deep ravine, surrounded by sharp rocks. In the somber night only the murmur of the river between its green banks nearby, can be heard. At last the full moon appears from behind a mountain. Its yellow disk rises above the dark grass and the rocks. Its subtle and magnetic light flows into the depths; suddenly the enchanted valley is filled with an Elysian brightness. In a single instant its grassy depths, its groves of ash and poplar, its crystal streams, its grottos clad in falling ivy, and its winding river encircling islands of trees or rolling under entwined bowers, is revealed. A yellow mist and a delightful sleep envelop the plants. The sighs of nymphs seem to make the mirror of the streams tremble, and faint sounds of a flute are heard from the motionless reeds. The silent incantation of Diana reigns over all... . The disciple of Delphi walks as though in a dream. He pauses to inhale the delightful aroma of honeysuckle and bitter laurel. But the magic brightness lasts only for an instant: The moon is covered with a cloud. Everything becomes dark; the rocks again assume their threatening forms and flickering lights shine from all sides beneath the dense trees, at the edge of the river, in the depths of the valley. "Those are the mystics," the aged guide of the temple says. "They are setting out on their way. Each procession has its torch-bearing guide. We shall follow them." The travellers meet choirs leaving the woods, starting on their journey. First they see the Mystics of Young Bacchus pass by: adolescents clothed in long tunics of fine linen, and wearing crowns of ivy. They bear cups of carved wood, symbols of the cup of life. Then follow proud, sturdy young men. These are called The Mystics of Fighting Hercules: they wear short tunics which reveal their bare legs; lion's skins are draped over their shoulders and loins, and they wear crowns of olive leaves upon their heads. Next the inspired ones appear, The Mystics of Dismembered Bacchus, skins of panthers around their bodies, bands of velvet about their heads, thyrsus in their hands. Passing near a cavern, they see the Mystics of Adonis and of Subterranean Eros kneeling upon the ground. They are mourning dead relatives or friends. They sing in a low voice, "Adonis, Adonis! Give us back those you have taken from us, or let us go down into your kingdom!" The wind is swallowed up in the cavern, seeming to stretch itself into the underworld with laughs and mournful rattles of death. Suddenly a mystic turns to the disciple of Delphi and says, "You have crossed the threshold of Adonis; never again will you see the light of the living!" Another brushes past him, uttering these words in his ear: "Shade, you will be the prey of Shades! You who come from the night, return to Erebus!" The disciple of Delphi is frozen with fright. He whispers to his guide: "What does this mean?" The servant of the temple appears to have heard nothing. He only says, "You must pass over the bridge. No one avoids the end." They cross a wooden bridge spanning the Peneus. "Where," asks the neophyte, "do these plaintive voices and that mournful chant come from? What are those white shadows which walk in long lines beneath the poplars?" "They are women who are about to become initiated into the Mysteries of Dionysus." "Do you know their names?" "Here no one knows the name of anyone, and each forgets his own. As at the entrance to the holy realm the mystics leave their soiled garments when they bathe themselves in the river, afterward clothing themselves in robes of clean linen, here each leaves his name in order to receive another. For seven nights and seven days, one becomes transformed, one passes into another life. Look at all those processions of women! They are not grouped according to family or country, but according to the god who inspires them." Young girls file by, wearing crowns of narcissus and dressed in blue peplos. The guide named these The Companion Nymphs of Persephone. They carry chests, urns and votive vases. Pressed in red peplos next appear The Mystic Lovers, The Passionate Wives and The Seekers of Aphrodite. They move into the depths of the dark forest. From it come violent cries, mixed with languishing sobs. Little by little, these die away. Then a passionate chorus arises from the dark myrtle wood, mounting to the sky in slow measures. "Eros, you have wounded us! Aphrodite, you have broken our bones! We have covered our breasts with the skin of the fawn, but we bear on our breasts the bloody marks of our wounds! Our heart is a consuming furnace. Others die of poverty; it is love which consumes us. Devour us, Eros! Erosl -- Or deliver us, Dionysus! Dionysus!" Another procession moves forward. These women are clothed entirely in black wool, with long veils trailing behind them; all are overcome with deep mourning. The guide calls them Persephone's Mourners. At this place is a great marble mausoleum, covered with ivy. They kneel around it, unbinding their hair, as they utter great cries. To the strophe of desire they respond with the antistrophe of grief. "Persephone," they cry, "you are dead, carried away by Adonis! You have descended into the kingdom of the dead. But we who mourn the beloved are the living dead! Let day not dawn for us again! Let the earth which covers you, O great goddess, give us everlasting sleep, and our shade wander, bound to the beloved shade! Hear us, Persephone! Persephone!" At these strange scenes, under the contagious delirium of these great sufferings, the disciple of Delphi is overcome by a thousand contradictory and tormenting sensations. He is no longer himself; the desires, thoughts and death agonies of all these beings have become his own desires and agonies. His soul is divided into pieces in order to enter a thousand bodies. A mortal anguish has invaded his being. He no longer knows whether he is man or shade. Then an initiate of great stature who is passing by, pauses and says, "Peace be to the afflicted phantoms! Suffering women, strive for the light of Dionysus! Orpheus is awaiting you!" All surround him in silence, waving their crowns of asphodels; with his thyrsus he points the way. The women go to drink from wooden cups at a stream. The line forms again, and the procession moves on. The young girls have taken the lead. They sing a threnody with the refrain, "Shake the poppies! Drink the water of Lethe! Give us the flower of desire, and may the narcissus bloom again for our sisters! Persephone! Persephone!" The disciple walks beside his guide for a long time. He passes over fields where the asphodel grows. He walks beneath the shadow of sadly murmuring poplars. He hears lugubrious songs which glide into the air and come from he knows not where. He sees horrible masks and wax figurines hanging from trees like swaddled children. Here and there boats cross the river, filled with people, silent like dead men. Finally the valley broadens, the sky becomes clear above the high mountains. The dawn appears. In the distance can be seen the dark gorges of Ossa, furrowed with ravines, choked with fallen rocks. Nearer, encircled by mountains, the temple of Dionysus shines upon a wooded hill. Already the sun has gilded the lofty mountain tops. As they approach the temple, coming from all directions, they see processions of mystics, long lines of women, groups of initiates. Outwardly grave but inwardly excited by a tumultuous hope, all meet at the foot of the hill and ascend the approach to the sanctuary. All greet one another like friends, waving the branches and thyrsi. The guide has disappeared, and the disciple of Delphi finds himself, he knows not how, in a group of initiates, their shining hair encircled with crowns and bands of various colors. He has never seen them before, yet he thinks he knows them. They also seem to be waiting for him, for they greet him as a brother, congratulating him on his safe arrival. Carried along by the crowd as though borne on wings, he climbs to the highest steps of the temple. Suddenly, a blinding flash of light strikes his eyes. It is the rising sun, casting its first arrow into the valley, its gleaming rays flooding this assembly of mystics and initiates grouped on the steps of the temple. Immediately a choir strikes up a paean of praise. The bronze doors of the temple open and, followed by Hermes and the torch bearer, the prophet, the hierophant, Orpheus appears. The disciple of Delphi recognizes him with a tremor of joy. Clothed in velvet, his lyre of ivory and gold in his hand, Orpheus glows with everlasting youth. He says, "Hail to all of you who have come to be reborn after the sorrows of earth, and who are being reborn at this moment! Come, drink of the light of the temple. You who appear out of the night, -- mystics, women, initiates! Come, rejoice, You who have suffered; come, rest, You who have fought! The sun which I invoke above your heads and which will shine in your souls is not the sun of mortals; it is the pure light of Dionysus, the great Sun of the initiates. Through your past sufferings, through the trial which brings you here, you will conquer, and if you believe in the divine words, you already have conquered. For after the long circuit of dark existences you will finally leave the painful circle of births, and all of you will find yourselves as a single body, a single soul, in the light of Dionysus! "The divine spark which guides us upon earth is in us; it becomes a flame in the temple, a star in the sky. Thus the light of truth grows brighter. Listen to the Lyre of seven strings vibrate, the Lyre of God . . . It causes worlds to move! Listen well! May the sound penetrate you, and may the depths of the heavens open! "Help for the weak, consolation for the suffering, hope for all! But woe to the wicked, to the uninitiated! They will be confounded! For in the ecstasy of the Mysteries each one sees to the very bottom of the soul of the other! The wicked shall be struck with terror, and the profaners with death. "And now that Dionysus has shone upon you, I shall invoke celestial and all-powerful Eros. May he be in your loves, in your cries, in your joys! Love, for everything loves -- the demons of the abyss and the gods of the ether! Love, for everything loves! But love with light, and not with darkness. Remember your goal during your journey. When souls return to the light they bear all the mistakes of their lives like ugly spots upon their sidereal body ... And in order to erase them, they must expiate them and return to earth . . . But the pure, the strong enter into the Sun of Dionysus. "And now, sing the Evohe!" "Evohe!" shout the heralds from the four corners of the temple. "Evohe," and the cymbals sound. "Evohe!" replies the joyful assembly, gathered on the steps of the temple. And the call of Dionysus, the holy call to rebirth, to life, rolls into the valley, repeated by a thousand hearts, sent back by all the echoes of the mountains. And the shepherds in the wild gorges of Ossa and those feeding their herds in the highland forests near the clouds, answer, "Evohe."*2 Notes for this chapter:

51Pausanias tells us that every year a procession made its way from Delphi to the Valley of Tempe
to pick the sacred laurel. This symbolic custom reminded Apollo's disciples that they were attached to the Orphic initiation, and that the original sign of Orpheus was the ancient, sturdy tree whose young living branches the priests of Delphi always picked. This blending of Apollonian and Orphic tradition is to be observed in yet another manner in the history of the temples. In fact, the famous dispute between Apollo and Bacchus over the tripod of the temple has no other meaning. Bacchus, says the legend, gave the tripod to his brother and withdrew to Parnassus. This means that Dionysus and the Orphic initiation remained the privilege of the initiates, while Apollo gave his oracles to the people in general.

52The cry Evohe, which in reality was pronounced, He Vau He, was the sacred cry of all the
initiates of Egypt, Judea, Phoenicia, Asia Minor and Greece. The four sacred letters, pronounced in the following manner: lod (EE) He, Vo, He, represented God in His eternal fusion with nature; they embraced the totality of Being, the Living Universe. /od (Osiris) meant Divinity, strictly speaking, creative intellect, the Eternal Masculine, which is in all things, in all places and above all. He-Vau- He represented the Eternal Feminine, Eve, Isis, Nature, in all the visible and invisible forms engendered by it. The highest initiation, that of the theogonic sciences and the theurgic arts, corresponded to the letter Jod (EE). Another order of sciences corresponded to each of the letters of Eve. Like Moses, Orpheus reserved the sciences which corresponded to the letter Jod (Jove, Zeus, Jupiter) and the idea of the unity of God, to the initiates of the first class, seeking nevertheless to interest the people in it through poetry, the arts and their living symbols. It is for this reason that the cry Evohe was openly proclaimed in the Festivals of Dionysus, where, besides the initiates, the simple aspirants to the Mysteries were admitted. In this appears all the difference between the work of Moses and the work of Orpheus. Both departed from Egyptian initiation and possessed the same truth, but they applied it in different ways. Moses severely, jealously glorifies the Father, the male God. He entrusts its care to a sacred priesthood and subjects the people to an implacable discipline without revelation. Orpheus, divinely in love with the External Feminine, with Nature, glorifies her in the name of God, who penetrates her and whom he wishes to make burst forth in a divine humanity. And this is why the cry Evohe became the sacred cry par excellence, in all the Mysteries of Greece. (On Evohe see Rudolf Steiner: Eurythmy as Visible Speech and Visible Song. -- Ed.)

28Evocation
The festival had faded like a dream; the evening had come. The dances, songs and prayers had vanished in the pink mist. Orpheus and his disciple descended through an underground passage into the sacred crypt, extending into the heart of the mountain, to which the hierophant alone had access. It was here that the inspired of the gods devoted themselves to solitary meditation or with the adepts pursued the great arts of magic and theurgy. Around them spread a vast cavern. Two torches placed upon the ground only dimly lighted the creviced walls and the shadowy depths. A few steps away a dark fissure opened upward into the sunlight. A warm wind came from it, and extending downward, the crevice seemed to descend into the bowels of the earth. A small altar where a fire of dry laurel burned, and a porphyry sphinx guarded the edge of the opening. Far above at a great height, the cavern opened to the starry sky through a slanting fissure. This pale ray of bluish light seemed like the eye of the firmament itself, plunging into this abyss. "You have drunk from the streams of holy light," said Orpheus, "you have entered with a pure heart into the heart of the Mysteries. The solemn hour has come when I shall cause you to penetrate to the sources of life and light. Those who have not lifted the thick veil which conceals the invisible wonders from the eyes of men, have not become the sons of the gods. "Listen, therefore, to the truths which must be kept from the crowd, and which are the strength of the sanctuaries: "God is One, and always resembles Himself. He reigns everywhere. But the gods are myriad and varied, for Divinity is eternal and infinite. The greatest are the souls of the stars. Suns, stars, earths and moons -- each star has its own soul, and all have come out of the celestial fire of Zeus, the Primal Light. Semiconscious, inaccessible, unchanging, they rule the great Whole with their regular movements. And into its ethereal sphere each revolving star leads hosts of demigods or shining souls who once were men, and who, having descended the ladder of the kingdoms, gloriously ascended through the cycles once again, finally to leave the circle of births. It is through these divine spirits that God breathes, moves, appears. They are the breath of His living Soul, the rays of His eternal consciousness. They command the hosts of lesser spirits, which bestir the lower elements; they direct the worlds. Far and near, they surround us and although immortal in essence, they clothe themselves in eternally changing forms according to the people, the age and the region. The impious who deny them, fear them; the devout man worships them without knowing them; the initiate knows them, attracts them and sees them. If I have fought to find them, if I have braved death, if, as is said, I descended into hell, it was to subdue the demons of the abyss, to call the gods from on high to my beloved Greece so that the lofty heaven might become wedded to earth, and the spellbound earth listen to the divine voices! Celestial beauty will become incarnate in the flesh of women, the fire of Zeus will flow in the blood of heroes, and long before returning to the stars, the sons of the gods will be resplendent like the Immortals! "Do you know what the Lyre of Orpheus is? It is the sound of inspired temples. They have the gods as strings. At their music Greece will become attuned like a lyre, and the marble itself will sing in brilliant cadences and celestial harmonies. "And now I shall call forth my gods, so that in living form they may appear before you, and may show you, in a prophetic vision, the mystical marriage which I am preparing for the world and which the initiates will witness. "Lie down in the shelter of this rock. Fear nothing. A magic sleep will close your eyelids. You will tremble at first, and you will see terrible things. But afterward a pleasant light, an unknown happiness, will flood your senses and your being!" The disciple had already crouched in the niche cut in the form of a couch in the rock. Orpheus threw some aromatics on the altar fire. Then he seized his rod of ebony, tipped with a flashing crystal, placed himself near the sphinx and in a deep voice began the evocation: "Cybele! Cybele! Great Mother, hear me! Original light, agile ethereal flame, forever bounding through space, embracing the echoes and images of all things! I call upon your flaming chargers of light! O, Universal Soul, Creator of Abysses, Sower of Suns, who let your starry mantle trail in the ether, subtle, hidden light, invisible to the eyes of flesh, Great Mother of Worlds and gods, you who embody eternal archetypes! Ancient Cybele, come to me! Come to me! By my magic rod, by my pact with the Powerful, by the soul of Eurydice, I call you forth, many-bodied wife, gentle and vibrant beneath the fire of the everlasting Male! From the highest of spaces, from the deepest abysses, from all directions, come, make haste! Fill this cavern with your effluvia! Surround the son of the Mysteries with a diamond rampart, and make him see in your deep breast the Spirits of the Abyss, of Earth and of the Heavens!" At these words, underground thunder shook the depths of the cavern and the whole mountain trembled. A cold sweat froze the body of the disciple. He saw Orpheus through a thickening smoke. At one moment he tried to fight against the dread power which felled him, but his brain was overcome, his will annihilated ... He suffered the agonies of a drowning man who swallows water by the mouthful, and whose horrible convulsion ends in the darkness of unconsciousness ... When he regained consciousness, night surrounded him, a night mixed with a dreadful twilight, yellowish and foul. For a long time he stared before him without seeing anything. Frequently he felt his skin brushed as by invisible bats. Finally, dimly, he thought he saw monstrous forms of centaurs, hydras and gorgons move in the shadows. But the first thing he saw distinctly was the huge figure of a woman sitting upon a throne. She was enveloped in a long veil with funereal folds, sewn with dim stars, and was wearing a crown of poppies. Her great open eyes watched motionless. Hosts of human phantoms moved around her like tired birds, whispering in a low voice, "Queen of the dead, Soul of earth, O Persephone! We are the daughters of heaven. Why are we in exile in this dark kingdom? O Harvester of Heaven, why have you prisoned our souls, which once flew happily among their sisters in the light, in the fields of ether?" Persephone answered, "I have gathered the narcissus; I have entered the nuptial bed. I drank death with life. Like you, I groan in darkness." "When shall we be delivered?" asked the groaning souls. "When my celestial husband, the divine liberator, comes," answered Persephone. Then terrible women appeared. Their eyes were blood-shot, their heads crowned with poisonous plants. Around their arms and half-naked bodies coiled serpents which they handled like whips. "Souls, specters, larvae!" they hissed, "do not believe the crazy queen of the dead! We are the priestesses of dark life, servants of the elements and of the monsters below, Bacchantes on earth, Furies in Tartarus! We are your eternal queens, unfortunate souls! You shall not leave the cursed circle of births; we shall make you return with our whips! Writhe forever between the hissing coils of our serpents, in the knots of desire, of hate, of remorse!" And dishevelled, they rushed upon the group of bewitched souls, who began to whirl about in the air beneath their whip lashes like a tempest of dry leaves, uttering long groans. At this sight, Persephone became pale; she seemed no more than a lunar phantom. She murmured, "Heaven, Light... gods ...adream! Sleep, eternal sleep!" Her crown of poppies withered, her eyes closed in anguish. The queen of the dead fell into a lethargy upon her throne, and everything disappeared into the darkness. The vision changed. The disciple of Delphi saw himself in a beautiful green valley. Mount Olympus arose at the end of it. Before a dark cave, beautiful Persephone was sleeping on a bed of flowers. In her hair a crown of narcissus replaced the crown of funereal poppies, while the dawn of a new life spread an ambrosial hue over her cheeks. Her dark tresses fell upon her shoulders of sparkling whiteness, and the roses of her gently lifted breasts seemed to summon the kisses of the winds. Nymphs danced upon the field; small white clouds wandered in the azure. A lyre resounded in a temple... In its golden voice, its sacred rhythms the disciple heard the secret music of things. For from the leaves, waves and caverns came a formless, tender melody, and the distant voices of choruses of initiated women in the mountains reached his ear in broken cadences. Some, bewildered, called upon the gods; others thought they saw them as they fell at the edge of the forests, half-dead with fatigue. At last the blue opened to the zenith, giving birth to a sparkling cloud out of its breast. Like a bird which hovers a moment, then sinks to earth, the god who holds the thyrsus descended and stood before Persephone. He was radiant; in his eyes beamed the divine delirium of worlds about to be born. For a long time he held her with his gaze; then he lifted his thyrsus over her. The thyrsus brushed her breast; she began to smile. He touched her forehead; she opened her eyes, sat up slowly and looked at her husband. Those eyes, still filled with the sleep of Erebus, began to shine like two stars. "Do you recognize me?" asked the god. "O Dionysus," cried Persephone, "Divine Spirit, Word of Jupiter, Celestial Light which shines in the form of man! Each time you awaken me I think that I am living for the first time; worlds are reborn in my memory; the past and future again become the immortal present, and I feel the universe in my heart!" At the same time, above the mountains, on the edge of the silver clouds, the gods appeared, leaning curiously toward the earth. Below, groups of men, women and children coming out of valleys and caves, looked at the Immortals with a celestial rapture. Ardent hymns ascended from the temples, along with waves of incense. Between earth and heaven was being prepared one of those marriages which make mothers conceive heroes and gods. Already a pink hue had spread over the entire countryside; already the Queen of the Dead, the Divine Harvester, again ascended to heaven, borne in the arms of her husband. A purple cloud surrounded them, and the lips of Dionysus were placed upon Persephone's mouth . . . Then a tremendous cry of love came from heaven and earth, as if the holy tremor of the gods passing over the Great Lyre wished to tear all the cords and cast the sounds to the four winds. At the same time, from the divine couple burst a fulguration, a hurricane of blinding light . . . And everything disappeared . . . For a single moment the disciple of Orpheus felt as if swallowed up in the very Source of all lives, immersed in the Sun of Being. But, plunging into its incandescent furnace, he reappeared with celestial wings and like a flash of light he traversed worlds, at their boundaries finding the ecstatic sleep of Infinity. When he regained his corporeal senses, he was plunged into black night. A luminous lyre alone shone in the deep shadows. It moved away rapidly, like a star. Then only did the disciple recognize that he was in the crypt of evocation, and that this luminous point was the distant cleft in the cavern, opening to the firmament. A great form was standing near him. He recognized Orpheus by his long curls and the flashing crystal of his staff. "Child of Delphi, where are you coming from?" asked the hierophant. "O Master of Initiates, Celestial Charmer, Wondrous Orpheus, I had a divine dream! Was it perhaps a magic charm, a gift of the gods? What happened? Has the world changed? Where am I now?" "You have gained the crown of initiation; you have lived my dream. Greece will be immortal! -- But let us leave here, for in order for the dream to be fulfilled, I must die and you must live."

29The Death of Orpheus
Lashed by the tempest, the forests of oak trees roared on the slopes of Mount Kaoukaion; the thunder rolled with all its might upon the bare rocks, making the temple of Jupiter shake to its very foundations. The priests of Zeus were assembled in a vaulted crypt of the sanctuary. Seated upon their bronze seats, they formed a semi-circle. Orpheus was standing in their midst, like one accused. He was paler than usual, but a deep flame appeared in his calm eyes. The eldest of the priests raised his voice, grave as that of a judge: "Orpheus, you whom they call son of Apollo, we have named you pontiff and king; we have given you the mystic staff of the sons of God; you rule over Thrace with a priestly and royal skill. You raised up the temples of Jupiter and Apollo in this country, and you made the divine Sun of Dionysus shine in the night of the Mysteries. But do you know what really threatens us? You who know the dread secrets, you who more than once have foretold the future, and who spoke to your disciples from a distance by appearing to them in a dream, you do not know what is taking place around you! In your absence, the savage Bacchantes, the accursed priestesses, have assembled in the valley of Hecate. Led by Aglaonice, the sorceress of Thessalia, they have persuaded the leaders on the banks of the Ebre to re-establish the cult of dark Hecate, and threaten to destroy the temples of the male gods and all the altars of the Most High. Agitated by their burning tongues, led by their flaming torches, a thousand Thracian warriors are encamped at the foot of this mountain. Tomorrow they will attack our temple, incited by the breath of these women clothed in panther skins, greedy for the blood of males. Aglaonice, high-priestess of sinister Hecate, leads them; she is the most fearful of sorceresses, implacable and fierce as a Fury. You must know her! What have you to say?" "I knew all this," said Orpheus, "and all this had to be." "Then why have you done nothing to defend us? Aglaonice has sworn to slay us on our altars before the living Heaven which we worship! But what is to become of this temple, its treasures, your wisdom, and Zeus himself if you abandon it?" "Am I not with you?" asked Orpheus gently. "You have come, but too late," said the old man. "Aglaonice is leading the Bacchantes, and the Bacchantes are leading the Thracians. Will you repel them with the thunder of Jupiter and the arrows of Apollo? Why do you not call into this enclosure the Thracian leaders who are faithful to Zeus, in order to crush the revolt?" "It is not by arms, but by the Word that one defends the gods. It is not the leaders whom you must strike, but the Bacchantes. I shall go: I alone. Fear not. No profane person will enter this enclosure. Tomorrow the reign of the bloody priestess will end. And mark well, you who tremble before the horde of Hecate, the celestial and solar gods will be victorious! To you, old man who doubted me, I leave the staff of pontiff and the crown of hierophant." "What are you going to do?" asked the old man, frightened. "I am going to rejoin the gods... To all of you... . Farewell..." Orpheus went out, leaving the priests sitting dumb in their seats. In the temple he found the disciple of Delphi, and taking his hand firmly, said, "I am going to the camp of the Thracians. Follow me." They walked under the oak trees; the storm was far away. Between the thick branches shone the stars. "For me the supreme hour has come," said Orpheus. "Others have understood me; you have loved me. Eros is the oldest of the gods, say the initiates; he holds the key to all beings. I have caused you to penetrate to the depth of the Mysteries; the gods have spoken to you, you have seen them. Now, far from men at the hour of his death, Orpheus must leave his beloved disciple the explanation of his destiny, the immortal heritage, the pure flame of his soul." "Master, I am listening, and I shall obey," said the disciple of Delphi. "Let us walk along this descending path," said Orpheus. "The hour is near. I wish to surprise my enemies. Follow me. Listen and engrave my words in your memory, but keep them secret." "They will be imprinted in letters of fire upon my heart; centuries will not erase them!" "You know now that the soul is the daughter of Heaven. You have beheld your origin and your end, and you are beginning to recollect. When the soul descends into the flesh, it continues to receive the influx from above. And it is through our mothers that this powerful breath first reaches us. The milk of their breasts nourishes our bodies, but it is from their souls that our being is nourished, anguished by the stifling prison of the body. My mother was a priestess of Apollo; my first memories are those of a sacred grove, a solemn temple, a woman carrying me in her arms, enveloping me with her soft hair like warm clothing. Terrestrial objects, human faces, overwhelmed me with a dreadful terror. But immediately my mother embraced me in her arms, I met her glance and it flooded me with a divine recollection of Heaven. But this ray died in the dark gloom of earth. One day my mother disappeared; she was dead. Deprived of her gaze, cut off from her caresses, I was terrified in my solitude. Having seen the blood of sacrifice flow, I held the temple in horror and descended to the dark valleys. "The Bacchantes were astounded at my youth. From that time Aglaonice has ruled over these voluptuous, savage women. Men and women, -- everyone feared her. She breathed dark desire and struck others with terror. This Thessalian sorceress exercised a fatal attraction over all who came near her. Through the skill of infernal Hecate she lured young girls into her haunted valley and instructed them in her cult. Meanwhile, Aglaonice had cast her eyes upon Eurydice. She was overcome with a perverse desire, an unbridled evil lust for this virgin. She wanted to draw this young girl into the cult of the Bacchantes, to subdue her, and give her over to infernal genii after having despoiled her youth. Already she surrounded her with seductive promises, with her nocturnal incantations. "Drawn into the valley of Hecate by some unknown impulse, one day I was walking through the high grasses of a field covered with poisonous plants. Everything around me breathed the horror of the dark forests haunted by the Bacchantes. Perfumes passed by me in gusts like the warm breath of desire. I saw Eurydice. She was walking slowly toward a grotto as though drawn by an invisible charm. Sometimes from the forest came a faint laugh of the Bacchantes, sometimes a strange sigh. Eurydice would stop, trembling, uncertain, and then continue walking as though drawn by a magic power. Her golden curls flowed over her white shoulders, her narcissus eyes swam with intoxication as she walked toward the mouth of Hell. But I had seen Heaven asleep in her glance. Eurydice!' I cried out, seizing her hand, 'where are you going?' "As though awakened from a dream, she uttered a cry of horror and deliverance at once, and then fell upon me. At that instant the divine Eros subdued us, and with a single look, Eurydice and Orpheus were husband and wife forever. "Meanwhile Eurydice, who clung to me in her fright, pointed toward the grotto with a gesture of terror. I went nearer and saw a woman sitting within. It was Aglaonice. Near her was a small statue of Hecate in wax, painted red, white and black, and holding a whip. She muttered words of a spell while turning her magic spinning wheel; her eyes, staring into emptiness, seemed to devour her prey. I broke the wheel, trod Hecate underfoot, and looking at the sorceress with a severe glance, cried out, By Jupiter! I forbid you to think of Eurydice, under penalty of death! For indeed the sons of Apollo do not fear you!' "Aglaonice, stupefied, writhed like a serpent and disappeared into her den, casting a look of mortal hatred at me. "I led Eurydice to the door of my temple. The virgins of Ebre, crowned with hyacinth, sang Hymen, Hymeneus!' around us; I knew happiness. "The moon had changed only three times when a Bacchant, directed by the Thessalian sorceress, presented a cup of wine to Eurydice which would give her, said she, the knowledge of philters and magic herbs. Curious, Eurydice drank it and fell lifeless. The cup contained a fatal poison. "When I saw the pyre consume Eurydice, when I saw the tomb swallow her ashes, when the last trace of her living form had disappeared, I cried out, Where is her soul?' In despair I wandered over all Greece. I asked the priests of Samothrace for her evocation; I looked for her in the bowels of the earth, on Cape Tenarus, but in vain. Finally I came to the Cave of Trophonius. There certain priests lead courageous visitors through a crevice to the lakes of fire which boil in the interior of the earth, letting them see what is happening there. As one walks along the way, one goes into ecstasy and second sight opens. One hardly can breathe, the voice becomes choked, and one can no longer speak except by signs. Some retreat half-way, others persist and die of suffocation; the majority of those who leave the fissure alive become insane. Having seen what no lips must repeat, I climbed into the grotto again and fell into a profound lethargy. During this sleep of death, Eurydice appeared to me. She was floating in a nimbus, pale as a lunar ray, and said to me, For my sake you have braved Hell; you have sought me among the dead. Here I am; I come at your call. I do not dwell in the heart of the earth, but the region of Erebus, the place of shadows between earth and the moon. I whirl in this limbo, sorrowing like yourself. If you wish to free me, save Greece by giving her light. Then I myself, finding wings again, shall climb to the stars and you will find me in the light of the gods. Until then I must wander in the troubled and painful sphere . . .' Three times I tried to seize her, three times she vanished from my arms like a phantom. I heard only the sound of a string that is broken. Then a weak voice, like a gentle breath, sad like a farewell kiss, murmured: 'Orpheus!' "At this voice I awakened. This name, uttered by a soul, had changed my being. I felt the sacred tremor of an overwhelming desire and the power of a superhuman love pass through me. Eurydice alive would have given me the delirium of happiness; Eurydice dead made me find truth. It was with love that I put on the robe of linen, dedicating myself to the Great Initiation and to the ascetic life; it was through love that I entered into magic and sought divine knowledge; it was through love that I crossed the caverns of Samothrace, climbed the walls of the pyramids and entered the tombs of Egypt. I searched death to find life; and beyond life I saw the limbus, the souls, the transparent spheres and the ether of the gods. Earth opened her abysses, the sky, its flaming temples. The priests of Isis and Osiris gave their secrets to me. They had only those gods; I had Eros! Through him I spoke, sang and conquered! Through him I spelled the word of Hermes and the word of Zoroaster; through him I pronounced the word of Jupiter and Apollo! "But the hour for confirming my mission by my death is come. Once more I must descend into Hell to ascend into Heaven. Listen, dearest child, to my word: You will bear my doctrine to the temple of Delphi and my law to the Council of the Amphyctions. Dionysus is the Sun of the initiates; Apollo will be the Light of Greece; the Amphyctions, guardians of his justice." The hierophant and his disciple had reached the edge of the valley. Before them spread a clearing, surrounded by great masses of dark forest. Men were encamped at the edge of the forest, sleeping beside dying fires and flickering torches. Orpheus walked calmly into the midst of the sleeping Thracians, who were exhausted from a nocturnal orgy. A sentinel, still keeping watch, asked him his name. "I am a messenger from Jupiter. Call your leaders!" replied Orpheus. "A priest of the temple!" This cry of the sentinel spreads like an alarm over the whole camp. The men arm themselves; they call one another, swords shine. Astonished, the leaders surround the pontiff. "Who are you? What have you come to do?" "I am a representative of the temple. All of you, -- kings, leaders, warriors of Thrace, -- give up fighting with the Sons of Light and recognize the divinity of Jupiter and Apollo! The gods from above speak to you through me. I come as a friend if you listen to me, as a judge if you refuse to hear me." "Speak!" cried the leaders. Standing beneath a tall elm tree, Orpheus spoke. He spoke of the good deeds of the gods, of the glory of celestial light, of that pure life which he led up there with his fellow-initiates under the Eye of the great Ouranus, and which he wished to communicate to all men, promising to lessen their strife, to heal their sick and to teach them of the seeds which produce the divine fruits of life: joy, love, beauty. And as he spoke, his serious, gentle voice vibrated like the strings of a lyre and went deeper and deeper into the hearts of the wavering Thracians. From the heart of the forest the curious Bacchantes, torches in their hands, had also come, attracted by the music of a human voice. Scantily clothed in panther skins, they came to display their brown breasts and superb bodies. In the light of their torches, their eyes shone with vice and cruelty. But, calmed by the voice of Orpheus, they gathered around him or sat at his feet like tamed beasts. Some, seized with remorse, stared mournfully at the ground; others listened as though enraptured. And the Thracians, deeply moved, murmured among themselves, "A god is speaking; Apollo himself is charming the Bacchantes!" Meanwhile at the edge of the forest, Aglaonice was watching. The high priestess of Hecate, seeing the Thracians motionless and the Bacchantes controlled by a magic more powerful than hers, sensed the victory of Heaven over Hell, and saw her diabolical power crumbling into the darkness whence it had come, before the speech of the divine charmer. She threw herself before Orpheus violently, screaming, "A god, you say? Well I say he is Orpheus, a man like yourselves, a magician who is deceiving you, a tyrant who is usurping a crown for himself! A god, you say? The son of Apollo? Him? The priest? The proud pontiff? Throw yourselves upon him! If he is a god, let him defend himself... And if I lie, let me be destroyed!" Aglaonice was followed by a few leaders who were incited by her sorcery and inflamed with her hate. They threw themselves upon the hierophant. Orpheus uttered a great cry and fell, pierced by their swords. He raised his hand to his disciple, and said, "I die, but the gods live!" Then he breathed his last. Leaning over his body, the sorceress of Thessalia, whose face now resembled Tisiphone's, gazed with savage joy upon the last breath of the prophet, and prepared to draw an oracle from her victim. But great was the terror of the Thessalians upon seeing his corpse- like head revive in the flickering torchlight. A redness spread over the face of the dead man. His eyes opened wide, and a deep, gentle, terrible gaze fixed itself upon her . . . Meanwhile, a strange voice - - the voice of Orpheus -- once more came from those quivering lips, distinctly pronouncing the melodious and revengeful syllables, "Eurydice!" Before that stare and that voice, the terror-stricken priestess drew back, crying out, "He is not dead! They are going to pursue me forever! Orpheus! Eurydice!" Uttering these words, Aglaonice disappeared as though scourged by a hundred Furies. The bewitched Bacchantes and Thracians, seized with the horror of their crime, fled into the night, uttering cries of distress. The disciple remained alone beside the body of his master. When a sinister ray of Hecate came to light up the bloodstained linen and pale face of the great initiator, it seemed to him that the valley, river, mountains and deep forests groaned like a great lyre. Orpheus' body was burned by his priests, and his ashes were carried into the distant sanctuary of Apollo where they were venerated with a reverence given to the god himself. None of the rebels dared ascend to the temple of Kaoukaion. The tradition of Orpheus, his knowledge and his Mysteries were perpetuated there and spread to all the temples of Jupiter and Apollo. The Greek poets said that Apollo had become jealous of Orpheus because he was invoked more often than he. The truth is that when the poets sang of Apollo, the great initiates called upon the soul of Orpheus, savior and master of divination. Later the Thracians, converted to the religion of Orpheus, related that he had descended into Hell to search for the soul of his wife, and that the Bacchantes, jealous of his eternal love, had torn him to pieces. But the Thracians said that his head, cast into Ebre and carried away by its storm-tossed waves, still calls, "Eurydice, Eurydice!" Thus the Thracians honored as a prophet the one whom they had killed as a criminal, and who had converted them by his death. Thus the Orphic Word filtered mysteriously into the veins of Hellas by the hidden ways of the sanctuaries of initiation. The gods were harmonized by his voice like a temple chorus of initiates at the sounds of an invisible Lyre -- and the soul of Orpheus became the soul of Greece.

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