VI. The Son of God and the Son of Man. The Sacrifice of Orpheus

Now it was also the purpose of the legend to show that although Orpheus was in direct contact with the spiritual Powers, as the son of a Thracian River-God there was always the possibility that he would be unable to retain what was revealed to him through his own etheric body. The more thoroughly he made himself at home in the physical world and lived his life as a son of his country, the more did his power of clairvoyance recede. The story relates that Eurydice, the transmitter of his revelations, his soul-bride, was torn away from him through the bite of an adder—a picture of his human failings—and carried off to the underworld. He could win her back only by passing through an Initiation.—Whenever we are told of a journey into the underworld, an Initiation is meant.—In order to win back his bride, Orpheus must pass through an Initiation. But he was already too closely enmeshed in the physical world. He had indeed acquired the capacity to make his way into the underworld, but on his return, when his eyes again encountered the sunlight, Eurydice vanished from his sight. Why was this? It was because on seeing the sunlight he did something that was forbidden him: he turned and looked back. That is to say, he disobeyed a strict command given him by the God of the underworld, namely, that physical man, living on the physical plane, must not look back beyond the point of time I have indicated, to the period of the macrocosmic experiences of childhood; if these experiences were to penetrate into the consciousness normal in later life, they would give rise to clairvoyance in its ancient form. Hence the command of the God of the underworld that no man may seek to penetrate the mysteries of childhood, to remember where the Threshold is fixed.—But this was what Orpheus did, and he consequently lost the faculty of clairvoyance.