Diary, 2025

Most of the entries on this page are collected from my Dreamwidth blog, but I ceased blogging there at the end of August; you can jump to post-Dreamwidth entries here.

24 Mar 2025: Twin Angels of Death

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

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

μήτηρ γάρ τέ μέ φησι θεὰ Θέτις ἀργυρόπεζα
διχθαδίας κῆρας φερέμεν θανάτοιο τέλος δέ.
εἰ μέν κ’ αὖθι μένων Τρώων πόλιν ἀμφιμάχωμαι,
ὤλετο μέν μοι νόστος, ἀτὰρ κλέος ἄφθιτον ἔσται:
εἰ δέ κεν οἴκαδ’ ἵκωμι φίλην ἐς πατρίδα γαῖαν,
ὤλετό μοι κλέος ἐσθλόν, ἐπὶ δηρὸν δέ μοι αἰὼν
ἔσσεται, οὐδέ κέ μ’ ὦκα τέλος θανάτοιο κιχείη.

For my mother, the goddess Thetis of the silver feet, says
that I bear twin angels of death with me to my fate:
if I stay here and besiege the city of the Troians,
then my return is lost, but my name will live forever;
but if I go home to the beloved land of my fathers,
then my noble name is lost, but my life will long
endure, and my fated death will not soon reach me.

(Akhilles speaking. Homeros, Iliad IX 410–416, as translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly.)

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

31 Mar 2025: Becoming Luminous

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

ἔστιν οὖν ψυχὴ ἓν καὶ πολλὰ οὕτως· τὰ δὲ ἐν τοῖς σώμασιν εἴδη πολλὰ καὶ ἕν· τὰ δὲ σώματα πολλὰ μόνον· τὸ δ’ ὑπέρτατον ἓν μόνον.

So then, soul is one and many in this way; the forms within bodies are many and one; bodies are only many; but the highest is only one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1 Apr 2025

(Ron Hansen, Mariette in Ecstasy, as quoted by Adam Cadre, The Making of Photopia.)

5 Apr 2025: Translation is Treason

Akhilles returns to the killing-fields of Troia. Apollon encourages prince Aineias to step up and fight him but Akhilles’s armor, newly-forged by Hephaistos himself, is impervious to his blows. Akhilles is just about to kill Aineias when Poseidon spirits him away from battle. Akhilles raves (Iliad XX 344–352):

ὢ πόποι ἦ μέγα θαῦμα τόδ’ ὀφθαλμοῖσιν ὁρῶμαι:
ἔγχος μὲν τόδε κεῖται ἐπὶ χθονός, οὐδέ τι φῶτα
λεύσσω, τῷ ἐφέηκα κατακτάμεναι μενεαίνων.
ἦ ῥα καὶ Αἰνείας φίλος ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσιν
ἦεν: ἀτάρ μιν ἔφην μὰψ αὔτως εὐχετάασθαι.
ἐρρέτω: οὔ οἱ θυμὸς ἐμεῦ ἔτι πειρηθῆναι
ἔσσεται, ὃς καὶ νῦν φύγεν ἄσμενος ἐκ θανάτοιο.
ἀλλ’ ἄγε δὴ Δαναοῖσι φιλοπτολέμοισι κελεύσας
τῶν ἄλλων Τρώων πειρήσομαι ἀντίος ἐλθών.

Here is how Samuel Butler translates it:

Alas! what marvel am I now beholding? Here is my spear upon the ground, but I see not him whom I meant to kill when I hurled it. Of a truth Aeneas also must be under heaven’s protection, although I had thought his boasting was idle. Let him go hang; he will be in no mood to fight me further, seeing how narrowly he has missed being killed. I will now give my orders to the Danaans and attack some other of the Trojans.

This is hot garbage. It’s slow, it’s flat, and it conveys none of Akhilles’s fury or personality. (His own best friend, Patroklos, called him "a dreadful man, who would be quick to blame even the innocent!") My favorite, W. H. D. Rouse’s, is a little better but still not very good:

Confound it all, here’s a miracle done before my eyes! There lies my spear on the ground, and not a trace can I see of the fellow I meant to kill! Aineias must have some friends in heaven. And I thought his boasting was all stuff and nonsense! Let him go to the devil. He won’t have a mind to try me again after this happy escape from death! All right, I will round up our people and have a try for some other Trojans.

Rouse argued vehemently, and I more-or-less agree, that Homeros wasn’t trying to be high literature: the Iliad was meant to be a rousing story told over beer. Sure, it contains dignified history and theology, but it was not, itself, meant to be dignified—it was meant to be exciting enough to buy the bard another day’s meal and lodging. But I think Rouse dropped the ball, here.

Here’s how I’d translate it:

What the fuck kind of magic is this!?
Here’s my spear lying on the ground, but I can’t
see the man I meant to kill with it.
So Aineias really is dear to the immortal gods!
I thought he was just bullshitting me.
Eh, fuck it: he won’t have the guts to face me
again, happy to have cheated death once.
Come on, I’ll rally the bloodthirsty Danaans
to go and try some other Troian face-to-face.

Compared to the others, it may look like I’m taking liberties, but it’s nearly word-for-word...

(If you don’t like his language, let me remind you we’re talking about man-baby Akhilles and not, say, goody-two-shoes Diomedes or family-man Hektor!)

6 Apr 2025

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

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

(Aiskhulos, Agamemnon 1072-82.)

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

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

11 Apr 2025: The City and the Hero

I think I’ve found the mistake that I’ve been making: I’ve been mixing and matching my myths up! I have noted that the Horos-myth concerns growing up and gaining one’s inheritance, while the Greek myths concern exile-and-return, but I’m starting to think that these are not two different takes on the same idea; rather, I think they’re two different myths and I have been conflating them.

Let me start somewhere else and hopefully it’ll become clear as we go. No less than Hesiodos tells us that the Thebaian Wars and the Troian War are the two major events of the age of Heroes:

• In the former, Europe was snatched away from Tyre to Crete, and her son Kadmos left Crete (simultaneously by choice and compulsion) to found Thebai, which was ruled by his descendents. Eventually, Thebai was besieged by the Seven, who failed (with six of the Seven dying), and the Epigone (their "offspring," including Diomedes and Eurualos), who successfully sacked the city ten years later, carrying Europe’s magic necklace and robe and Manto away.

• In the latter, Helene was snatched away from Argos to Troia (simultaneously by choice and compulsion) by Paris. The Danaans sent an envoy to Troia, and when that failed, they (including Diomedes and Eurualos) besieged it for ten years (during which many of their heroes died), eventually sacking the city and carrying Helene and Kassandra away.

Mythically speaking, though, these have the same meaning: the stories of both follow largely the same events, with the only meaningful difference between them being that individuals in the Troia myth are represented by bloodlines in the Thebai myth. We see a very similar story in the Theseus myth, too: the Athenian Youths are snatched away from Athens to the labyrinth (mostly unwillingly, though Theseus by choice). He enters the labyrinth, slays it’s inhabitant, and carries the Athenian Youths and Ariadne away. (It is noteworthy that labyrinths are called "Troy-Towns" in England and Scandinavia to this day.)

These don’t follow the pattern of the Horos myth, since Horos never leaves Egypt; instead, he avenges his father and claims his birthright. So if Horos represents one category of myth (the Hero-myth), I think the three above constitute a second one; let’s call it the City-myth.

Now, I’ve been looking at a bunch of myths so far, and treating them all as following the Hero-myth model. But I think this is a miscategorization and causes problems (which is why I pulled my Hero Myth Rosetta Stone some weeks ago). The Perseus and Orestes myths clearly follow the Hero-myth model. The Odusseus myth does too, but only if we treat the Odusseia as self-contained, treating the Odusseus of the Iliad as a separate mythic character.

But Kore of the Persephone-myth isn’t Horos, she’s Europe! Just as Europe is beguiled by Zeus-as-a-bull and a crocus, Kore is beguiled by Hades (the "Khthonic Zeus") and a narcissus. Just as Helene is snatched away to the house of Paris, Kore is snatched away to the house of Hades. Here, though, the envoy from Olumpos (that is, Demeter and her attendants) manage to secure a truce rather than the house of Hades being destroyed. (That is, it covers the first half of the myth but not the last half.)

There’s another City-myth I haven’t discussed: the Aesir-Vanir War and Ragnarok. Here, Freyja goes (by choice?) to Asgard, the Vanir send an envoy, and the war ends in a truce with Freyja being held hostage by the Aesir. Then things settle for a long time before Asgard is eventually destroyed during Ragnarok (a second, separate war mostly involving the children of the first war, like with Thebai). Frustratingly, while there are tantalizing similarities (for example, Freyja has the Brisingamen and a magic cape, matching Europe’s magic necklace and robe), what remains of the Asgard myth—or at least my understanding of it, from my light studies so far!—seems fragmentary...

Now, while I think these are separate myths, there is an interesting way these fit together. The first half of the Hero-myth (that is, concerning Osiris, Danae, etc.) matches the City-myth: beautiful and wonderful Osiris being Europe, Helene, the Athenian Youths, Kore, Freyja, etc., but the second half of the Horos-myth has nothing to do with it. Now, Thebai, Troia, the labyrinth, Asgard, etc. are all obviously the material world in which we live. Horos is born of Isis (in the material world), so if we’re looking for a Horos-equivalent in the City-myth, we’re looking for someone on the "side" of the city (rather than an invader) and who avoids it’s destruction (since Horus is not present for any city’s destruction). (That is, even though Homeros treats the Danaans as the protagonists of his tale, we should be wary of them, since we are the Troians!) There was exactly one Troian hero who survived the sack of Troia: Aineias, son of Ankhises and Aphrodite, most pious of the Troians, called "hero" by Apollon himself, and most beloved by the gods. I think he’s our Horos, and the parallel is made explicit by Dionusos of Halicarnassos, who tells us that Aineias’s father warns him before Troia falls, causing him to withdraw to Ida; this is the direct correspondence with Osiris coming to Horos from Hades, and is the point at which the Hero-myth diverges from the City-myth: with the City going on to its destruction while Horos goes on to do something else.

There’s two things interesting about Aineias. First, I’ve always considered Virgil’s Aenead to be a second-rate knock-off of the Odusseia, but if I’m right and Aineias is Horos, then this makes sense, since the Odusseus of the Odusseia is also Horos, and thus they ought to tell the same myth. Second, I had been assuming that Baldr was the Germanic equivalent of Apollon or Horos, but Snorri Sturluson identifies Aineias as Víðarr, slayer of Fenrir and one of the only Aesir to survive Ragnarok, and who goes on to found a new city. Thus, presumably Víðarr is also Horos; and if (as Ploutarkhos says) that Seth is to be identified with the eclipse, then Fenrir (who gobbles up the Sun) is presumably Seth (or, more likely, one of his avatars, perhaps the red bull Horos fights).

In the same way, I assume Daidalos (successful) and Ikaros (cautionary) are the Horos-equivalents in the Theseus myth, literally taking on wings and leaving the labyrinth behind to its fate.

Please consider this a first-draft conjecture, there are many, many details that I have yet to chase down, but it resolves the discrepancies that caused me to need to rework my Hero Myth Rosetta Stone, which I will of course be working at as time permits.

It also carries with it the uncomfortable thought that Troia has not yet fallen: the material world is still here, the old gods are not yet dead. Hesiodos is unclear on the end of the Heroic age and the beginning of the Iron age—they seem to blend together—but on the basis of his descriptions of the end of the Iron age, the Voluspa’s descriptions of the prelude to Ragnarok, and of course my own theories that the old ways remain open (but probably not for much longer), the sack of Troia presumably comes soon. I urge to you to keep a weather eye out for Troian horses and to heed the warning of Laocoon which prompted Ankhises and Aineias to flee:

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.

I fear the Danaans, even those bearing gifts.

13 Apr 2025

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

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

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

15 Apr 2025: The Duel Between Aineias and Akhilleus

Happy Ares-day!

Since so many asked me to, and I’ve never tried my hand at translating a lengthy section, I figured I’d go ahead and give it the old college try... but yipes! this took forever, and, anticipating that, I went rather more quickly than usual (managing a dozen lines a day); so it’s probably a lot less precise than I usually strive for. Consider it a first draft!

104. Hero: ἥρως, literally “hero” in Greek, too. Hero comes from the Egyptian heru “falcon,” referring to the god Horos; that is, a “hero” is a little-H horos (rather than the big-H Horos). Many sources (Herodotos, Histories II cxliv; Diodoros, Library of History I xxv; Ploutarkhos, Isis and Osiris XII) equate Apollon with Horos, implying that Apollon is the god of heroes. If the god of heroes himself calls you a hero, I imagine you’re doing something right! In fact, Aineias is much beloved by the gods, being saved from certain death by each of Aphrodite, Apollon, and (as we see here) Poseidaon. He was also the only Troian hero to survive the fall of Troia.
109. Weary you: the pun is mine; the Greek is ἀτειρέα "unable to be dulled" and ἀποτρεπέτω "turn you away."
110. Prince: ποιμένι λαῶν, literally “shepherd of his people.” Homeros has a higher opinion of nobility than I do, but then, I guess I always was more of a Hesiodos sort of guy!
179. Itching to fight me: ἦ σέ γε θυμὸς ἐμοὶ μαχέσασθαι ἀνώγει, literally “did your heart command you to fight me?”
185. Orchards and fields: Greek distinguishes “land planted with field crops” (wheat, barley, etc.) and “land planted with anything else” (e.g. orchards, vineyards, gardens, etc.), and these are the two kinds of land being described.
193. Day of freedom: what a serendipitous turn of phrase!
194. Led them away: this was when Akhilleus captured his favorite girl-toy, Briseis, the fight over whom started off the events of the Iliad.
195. Like you think they will: ὡς ἐνὶ θυμῷ βάλλεαι, literally “as is set in your heart.”
198. Only an idiot makes the same mistake twice: ῥεχθὲν δέ τε νήπιος ἔγνω, literally “even a child learns from experience,” but I wanted to clarify it since Akhilleus is implying that Aineias would be foolish to try his luck again.
202. [...]: I know I make Aineias sound like a stoic, actions-speak-louder-than-words type of person here, but you should know that he goes on at excruciating length about the lineage of princes of Troia. He’s actually much more of a kinda square, by-the-book sort.
258. Spears: χαλκήρεσιν ἐγχείῃσιν, literally “bronze-tipped spears,” but the excessive repetition of the word “bronze” was galling.
259. That marvelous shield: the beautifully-crafted shield that Hephaistos, god of smiths, forged for him the night before and inlaid with beautiful imagery. Its description is one of the highlights of the Iliad, and can be found in XVIII 478–608.
270. The Clubfoot: Hephaistos, who was born lame.
272. [The middle] one of gold: gonna be honest, it seems pretty strange to use tin (which is brittle) and gold (which is both soft and very heavy) in a shield, especially on the inside where their corrosion-resistance and beauty aren’t on display!
281. Massive shield: ἀσπίδος ἀμφιβρότης, literally “shield which covers both sides of a man.”
284. Double-edged sidearm: ξίφος ὀξὺ, literally “sharp-pointed xiphos,” which was a backup weapon, a large dagger or short sword sharpened on both sides, meant for both slashing and stabbing.
293. I ache for great-hearted Aineias: Throughout the Iliad, Poseidaon sides with the Akhaians. His regard for Aineias is therefore quite special!
310. You do you: αὐτὸς σὺ μετὰ φρεσὶ σῇσι νόησον, “decide for yourself within your own heart.”
314. Little Athene: Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη, usually transliterated “Pallas Athene,” but Παλλάς from πάλλαξ, “child below the age of puberty.” I suppose that’s why she’s always said to be a virgin...
317. Martial: ἀρήϊοι, literally “of/like/devoted-to Ares,” which is the equivalent to "martial" (e.g. “of/like/devoted-to Mars”) in English. I edited this on 8 May 2025, and had originally translated this word as "warlike." The comments below reference the original.
317. So long as the [...] Akhaians kindle it: sheesh, talk about vindictive!
318. But when Poseidaon [...] had heard this: I like to think he rolled his eyes and gave an exasperated sigh before rushing off to save Aineias.
331. Piercing with words fletched as arrows: φωνήσας ἔπεα πτερόεντα, literally “speaking feathered words,” usually translated “winged words.” Like “the wine-colored sea” of the Odusseia, this is one of those phrases that classicists have been arguing over forever. I can’t for the life of me tell why, since the meaning seems obvious enough?
334. Dearer to the immortals than you are: yeah, maybe his mommy got him some fancy-pants armor, but you don’t see anybody rescuing Akhilleus from the battlefield, do you?
343. To himself: πρὸς ὃν μεγαλήτορα θυμόν, literally “at his own mighty heart.”

(Homeros, Iliad XX 103–352, as translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly.)

16 Apr 2025

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

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

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

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

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

19 Apr 2025: The Bath of Pallas

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

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

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

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

1. Kadmos ("pre-eminent") is led to the spot which would become Thebai by a cow with a moon-shaped spot on it. The nearby spring is guarded by a dragon; Kadmos slays it and, on the advice of Athene, sows its teeth. The teeth grow into a host of warriors, and Kadmos throws stones into the group, which causes them to attack each other until there are only five left, who pledge allegiance to Kadmos. One of these five, Oudaios ("from the ground"), has a son named Euerous ("well-built"). Euerous marries the nymph Khariklo ("famous for her beauty"), who is a favorite attendant of Athena, and they have a son, Teiresias ("prophet"). [Apollodoros, Library III iv, vi.]

   1. Euerous is only said to be "of the line" of Oudaios, but two considerations require Teiresias to be within two generations of him: first, he is blinded some time before Kadmos’s grandson, Aktaion, is killed; second, Teiresias becomes seer to Kadmos, and so is at least partially contemporaneous with him.

   2. Teiresias having one parent’s line being literally sprung from the earth and the other being divine has the same crucial resonance with other heroes, but perhaps none more than Aineias, who’s paternal grandfather was the brother of the founder of Troia (like how Oudaios was the close associate of the founder of Thebai), whose mother was Aphrodite (who, like Khariklo, is a divinity "famous for her beauty"), and who rescued those who could be from the sack of Troia.

2. One summer day, Athena, Khariklo, and young Teiresias are traveling through Mt. Helikon. Teiresias goes off to explore while Athena and Khariklo bathe in the spring of Hippokrene ("horse spring"). At some point, Teiresias comes back to the spring to get a drink, sees Athena naked, and is blinded for it by the law of Zeus. Athena is upset about this, but cannot override her father; so as to make amends to Khariklo, she gives Teiresias the gifts of prophecy, augury, long life, retaining his wits after death, and a magic staff of cornel-wood which would "guide his feet." [Kallimakhos on the Bath of Pallas; Apollodoros, Library III vi.]

   1. The Hippokrene is also where the Muses bathed before giving Hesiodos the gifts of an inspired voice and a staff of laurel-wood. [Hesiodos, Theogony 1–35.] Both seem to me reminiscent of how initiates of Osiris were purified and given heather stalks, or initiates of Dionusos were purified and given thursoi.

   2. The Bath of Pallas, which gives wisdom even as it inflicts punishment, is, of course, life in the material world, which is almost always treated as a purification or cleansing of the soul. (Indeed, Empedocles’s famous poem on the topic, which I have used as the basis of my interpretation of the hero-myths, is called Purifications.)

   3. Teiresias’s blindness and gifts, of course, are exactly the point of spirituality: one loses the ability to engage in the material world but gains the ability to engage in the spiritual world both now and after they die.

   4. Kallimakhos explicitly links this story to that of Aktaion. Both beheld their patron deity naked (Athena for Teiresias, Artemis for Aktaion), but Teiresias made good of evil, while Aktaion did not. I wonder if seeing one’s patron naked is the point of no return in spirituality: after that, one must either cease to be mortal or cease to be—there is no longer a middle ground, and this is why Neith’s statue says that no mortal has uncovered her dress.

   5. There is an alternate version of the story (made famous by Ovid) where Teiresias was blinded when he settled a bet between Zeus and Hera, saying that sex is ten times better for women than men. I dismiss this one out of hand, because it is of a popular nature and because spiritual teachings are unitive rather than divisive.

3. While traveling through Mt. Kullene, Teiresias comes upon two serpents entwined in sex and crushes them with his staff. This so incenses Hera that she changes Teiresias into a woman. Teiresias becomes a priestess of Hera, marries, and has a daughter named Manto ("prophecy"). At some point, Apollon tells Teiresias that if she comes upon a pair of serpents, to repeat her prior action, which happens in the eighth year after the first time, and she is changed back into a man. [Phlegon, Book of Wonders; Apollodoros, Library III vi.]

   1. Mt. Kullene is the birthplace of Hermes, and his symbol, the kerukeion, is two serpents entwined around a staff. Even today we call androgynous people mercurial. Teiresias being initiated by Hermes (if only figuratively) and Athena is shared by other hero myths, like Perseus and Odusseus.

   2. Surviving sources disagree about which serpent or serpents are crushed in each event. Most sources are either ambiguous or say both each time (and this is what I’ve followed), though others say that the female was crushed each time, or the female the first time and the male the second time. Whatever the case, the sex-change is an obvious reference to reincarnation; the killing of the serpents inadvertently is a symbol of dying without purpose, but the killing of the serpents intentionally is a symbol of dying with purpose. This is the same as the myth of Perseus, where the Gorgons ("grim things") represent death; but while Stheno ("forceful") and Euruale ("far-ranging") are immortal, indicating that death cannot be overpowered or outrun, Medousa ("she rules") is mortal, indicating that death doesn’t need to control us (and, indeed, can be put to good use—as Plotinos says, why should death trouble an immortal?). Therefore, Manto represents the realization of one’s true self, the soul which animates the body, which only comes through experience.

   3. The serpentine symbolism is also present in the Kadmos myth, where he kills the serpent of Ares, serves Ares for eight years, marries Ares’s daughter Harmonia, and finally is transformed with his wife into a pair of serpents.

   4. Archbishop Eustathios of Thessalonike, following an elegiac poet named Sostratos, tells an alternate version of the story in which Teiresias was born female and changed sexes six times before finally being turned into mouse (and presumably eaten by a weasel). I also dismiss this out of hand, because it is of a popular nature and is impossible to reconcile with both of the only reliable fixed points of the Teiresias’s life: his rescue of Thebai and the necromantic ritual of Odusseus.

4. When the Seven attack Thebai, the Thebaians ask Teiresias how they should be victorious, and he advises that if Menoikeus ("strength of the house"), son of Kreon, willingly sacrifices himself to Ares, that the Thebaians would be victorious, which he does and they are. Ten years later, when the Epigone attack Thebai and king Laodamas ("tamer of the people") is killed by Alkmaion (general of the Argives), Teiresias advises the people to send a herald to negotiate with the enemy and secretly flee meanwhile, which they do. Apollon shoots him with an arrow as he drinks from the spring of Tilphoussa and he dies there, but the people continue on to found Haliartos (about fifteen miles from Thebai). Manto, however, is captured by the Argives and, since they had promised "the most beautiful of the spoils" to Apollon, send her to Delphi. She becomes a priestess of the god and he sends her to Colophon to found an oracle. There, she marries Rhakios ("rag"), and has a son by him, Mopsos, who is also a celebrated seer and the rival of Kalkhos in the Nostoi. [Pausanias, Descriptions of Greece VII iii, IX xviii, IX xxxiii; Apollodoros, Library III vi–vii, Epitome vi.]

   1. Tilphoussa is the spring where Apollon first tried to institute his oracle, but the water nymph dissuaded him; after taking over the oracle at Delphi, he later returned and cursed the spring. [Homeric Hymn to Apollon 239–76, 375–87.]

   2. I have a theory that the myth of the house of Kadmos represents the mysteries, just like the myth of the house of Atreus or the myth of the house of Atum. If that is so, then the reason why Teiresias participated in the seven generations of Thebai up to the epigone (Kadmos→Poludoros→Labdakos→Laios/Kreon→Oidipous→Polunikes/Eteokles/Ismene/Antigone→Laodamas/Thersandros) is because he participated in the mysteries and, having mastering these, he was able to, on the one hand, save the women and children of Thebai, and on the other, guide future heroes (e.g. Odusseus) on the way home.

   3. Tilphoussa is on Mt. Tilphosium, which is right next to Mt. Helikon (which is where the Hippokrene was). There is something very Wizard of Oz about Teiresias’s life ending where it "began."

   4. That Teiresias ("prophet") dies but Manto ("prophecy") lives on to serve others is, of course, a common motif in spirituality and reminds me more of Plotinos than anyone.

   5. Manto marrying Rhakios ("rag") certainly shows how the mystery teachings are valued in the world: that is to say, not at all, and I wonder to what degree we possess the likes of Platon today because of his homosexual pedophilia, or Plotinos because nobody knew what to make of him, or Apollodoros because the mysteries were hidden in silly stories that nobody took seriously. Mopsos became celebrated precisely because he recognized the hidden value of those rags, though.

5. While lost at sea, Odusseus travels to Haides and summons Teiresias, now holding a golden staff, and receives advice on how to safely return home. [Homeros, Odusseia X–XI.]

20 Apr 2025: Beheading Medousa

I briefly mentioned Teiresias’s killing of the snakes and Perseus’s killing of Medousa as a reference to mastering the fear of death yesterday (note 3B). I spent some time searching up a favorite Zen story which I originally heard from D. T. Suzuki concerning the same thing:

Murakawa Soden tells the story that a certain vassal of the shogun once came to the great swordsmaster Yagyu Tajima no Kami Munenori and asked to become his student. Master Yagyu said, "You seem to already be very accomplished in some school of martial arts! First, tell me which school you’ve practiced under, and then we can make arrangements."

The man replied, "But I have never practiced any martial arts."

Master Yagyu said, "What, have you come to make fun of me? Do you think you can fool the teacher of the shogun himself?" But the man persisted, and so Master Yagyu said, "Well, I’ll believe you, but I insist that you must be a master of something. What is it?"

The man thought for a moment and said, "Ever since I was a boy, it seemed to me that a warrior should be somebody who is not afraid of death. Because of that, I have grappled with the problem of death for many years and now I no longer fear it. That’s the only thing I think I can honestly say that I have mastered."

Master Yagyu was deeply impressed and said, "That’s it! I know a master when I see one. You see, the ultimate principle of swordsmanship is freedom from the fear of death. I have trained many hundreds of students, but until now, not a single one has mastered that final principle. You need no technical training. I will initiate you right now." And he gave the man a certificate right then and there.

(Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure XI, as adapted from several translations by yours truly.)

23 Apr 2025

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

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

(Antikleia speaking to Odusseus. Homeros, Odusseia XI 216–24.)

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

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

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

(Akhilleus speaking to Odusseus. Homeros, Odusseia XI 488–91.)

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

24 Apr 2025: Further Notes on the City Myth

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

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

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

Now, compare this to the Troian royal line:

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

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

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

24 Apr 2025

Βασιλεύς. τὸ πάνσοφον νῦν ὄνομα τοῦτό μοι φράσον.

King Pelasgos. Now, tell me his masterly-devised name.

(Aiskhulos, Suppliant Maidens 320, as translated by yours truly.)

ὣς ἄρα οἱ εἰπόντι ἐπέπτατο δεξιὸς ὄρνις,
κίρκος, Ἀπόλλωνος ταχὺς ἄγγελος: ἐν δὲ πόδεσσι
τίλλε πέλειαν ἔχων, κατὰ δὲ πτερὰ χεῦεν ἔραζε
μεσσηγὺς νηός τε καὶ αὐτοῦ Τηλεμάχοιο.

As he was saying so a bird flew towards him on the right,
a falcon, the swift messenger of Apollon; and with its feet
it plucked a pigeon it was holding, and feathers fell to the ground
between Telemakhos and his ship.

(Homeros, Odusseia XV 525–8, as translated by yours truly. Emphasis mine, too.)

I can’t believe I didn’t notice this before now! In Greek, κίρκος kirkos means "falcon" or "hawk," obviously as suited to Apollon as it is to Horos. But this is the same word as Κίρκη Kirke, daughter of the Sun and initiator of Odusseus.

28 Apr 2025: The White Goddess Rises

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

321. The clothes which Kalupso gave him weighed him down: Kalupso ("one who covers") is sensual desire, and the clothes she gives Odusseus are the physical body (which enables sensual desire). Focusing on the body, of course, hampers the soul which wishes to return home.
328. Boreas: the frigid north wind.
331. Notos: the desiccating south wind.
332. Euros: the wet east wind.
332. Zephuros: the balmy west wind.
333. Ino: Ino (from νέω "I swim," cf. Tzetzes, on Lukophron §107) is the daugher of Kadmos, sister of Semele, and aunt and nurse of Dionusos. She represents the Mysteries guiding the mature soul which, having already mastered the fear of death (e.g. Kirke) and sensual desire (e.g. Kalupso), is nonetheless still lost in the tumult of the material world and doesn’t know the way home.
334. White: representative of purity (as the Mysteries are meant to purify the soul) and simplicity (as the Mysteries are meant to unify the soul). See also I Ching 22:6 and the Tao Te Ching 67.
334. Possessed of voice: humans communicate to the ears with words, but gods communicate directly to the mind with concepts, a thing which is at once uncanny and completely natural when one experiences it.
340. So very mad: this is a joke on Odusseus’s name, which means "he is angry at."
341. Don’t worry: μὲν δή, not really translatable but representing a continuation of the prior sentence’s thought, so I have added this phrase to bridge the two sentences.
343. Take off your clothes and abandon your raft: the clothes represent the body of dense matter and the raft represents the imagination of subtle matter, and the advice of the Mysteries is to prioritize the spiritual over the material, to "store up your treasures in heaven."
344. Swimming with your hands: it is not enough to merely experience the Mysteries; material things passively grow on their own, but spiritual things only grow by making active effort.
346. Veil: literally κρήδεμνον "head-tie," which could presumably refer to any kind of head-scarf or hair-ribbon, but Penelopeia wears one for modesty in the presence of men, so it most likely means a veil. It is meant to represent the teachings of the Mystery schools (which are, of course, veiled), and to tie the veil around one’s chest is to hold the Mystery teachings close to heart. I’m torn on whether this represents how the teachings act as a psychological life-preserver in the welter of life or whether it represents some more esoteric spiritual connection to the god which acts to buoy one upward: certainly my philosophical studies suggest the former, but my personal experiences suggest the latter.
349. Wine-like sea: οἴνοπα πόντον, literally "wine-faced sea" and usually taken as "dark in color," but the sea is a reference to life in the material world, which is as intoxicating and disorienting to the soul as wine is to the body.
350. Turn yourself far away from it: the Buddha taught that, just like a raft was good for crossing a river but pointless once one got to the other side, the Mysteries are for passing over and not for holding on to.

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

30 Apr 2025: Hero-Myth Correspondences

There is a lot of overlap between the Mysteries and the Epic Cycle:

(I have omitted the Telegoneia as it concerns Odusseus and not Orestes, who is a different hero.)

If my associations are correct, then Osiris=Helene, Isis=the Akhaian host (e.g. those oathbound to Menelaos, notably not including Akhilleus who was too young to woo Helene), Seth=Eris, Anoubis=Iphegenia, Bublos=Troia, Astarte’s unnamed son=Troilos (and the first Troian war generally), Diktus=Akhilleus (and the second Troian war generally), Horos=Orestes, Osiris as a jackal=the Puthia, Seth as a red bull=Aigisthos, the council of gods=the Athenian jury.

The only difficulty, really, is that it is Osiris that is divided up upon his return to Egypt and not Isis, whereas it is the Akhaians who are divided up on their return to Akhaia (and not Helene). This is a really significant symbolic difference and is necessary for the two narratives to work. From the pattern in the myth, Agamemnon should presumably have to be Osiris’s penis, which I guess shouldn’t be too surprising, since anybody who’s read the Iliad can tell you he’s a dick.

Despite that problem, though, the stories are so close there must be something to it. I still don’t have a convincing thesis for what’s going on here; I’m presently wondering if the version of the Horos-myth we have is, in fact, late and Syrian (presumably the oldest versions of the Horos-myth don’t involve Bublos)—in which case it could have been influenced from both sides of the Mediterranean. I’m going to need to go over the Pyramid Texts with more care, I think...

30 Apr 2025

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

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

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

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

1 May 2025: Sky Stories

Well, shit. I think I finally figured it out.

It’s well-known that the myth of Perseus is illustrated in the night sky:

There’s Perseus holding Medousa’s head (the demon star Algol from Arabic ra’s al-ghul "head of the ogre"), rushing to save Andromeda, chained to a rock, from the sea monster Ketus (the ecliptic nicely acting as the surface of the sea), while Kepheus and Kassiopeia look on.

This is often said to be the only complete mytheme still illustrated in the constellations as we know them today, but I just realized that this is mistaken: there’s another one, right next to it:

Nut is the sky. Geb is the earth, and his penis is the axis the earth turns around. Their children are the constellations, and Ra prevents her from giving birth because the Sun hides the constellations from view: we can only see them at night. Osiris is the one we call Orion, the great man in the sky, and the shape of Orion is, I presume, the reason why the Egyptians drew figures in their peculiar profile. The Nile is the Milky Way, of course, and there we see Isis in her boat, which we call by its Greek name, the Argo, still sailing the Nile searching for her husband. Osiris’s penis is highlighted in the myth because it’s the most notable feature of his constellation, though we call it Orion’s sword. (Perhaps this is a euphemism, though; in Greek, the word for sword, ἄορ, literally means "hanging thing.") Next to Osiris, we see the Apis bull, though we call it by its Latin name, Taurus. The children of the constellations are, of course, the stars: Horos is Sirius, the brightest star of heaven, literally following in his father’s footsteps; while Anoubis is Canopus, the second-brightest, attending to Isis in her boat.

Thus the theogony, as I said, is exoteric because everyone can look up at the sky and see the constellations; but the Mysteries are esoteric because only the initiated can look up at the sky and understand what the constellations mean.

2 May 2025: The Twin Gates of the Land of Dreams

τὸν δ’ αὖτε προσέειπε περίφρων Πηνελόπεια:
ξεῖν’, ἦ τοι μὲν ὄνειροι ἀμήχανοι ἀκριτόμυθοι
γίγνοντ’, οὐδέ τι πάντα τελείεται ἀνθρώποισι.
δοιαὶ γάρ τε πύλαι ἀμενηνῶν εἰσὶν ὀνείρων:
αἱ μὲν γὰρ κεράεσσι τετεύχαται, αἱ δ’ ἐλέφαντι:
τῶν οἳ μέν κ’ ἔλθωσι διὰ πριστοῦ ἐλέφαντος,
οἵ ῥ’ ἐλεφαίρονται, ἔπε’ ἀκράαντα φέροντες:
οἱ δὲ διὰ ξεστῶν κεράων ἔλθωσι θύραζε,
οἵ ῥ’ ἔτυμα κραίνουσι, βροτῶν ὅτε κέν τις ἴδηται.
ἀλλ’ ἐμοὶ οὐκ ἐντεῦθεν ὀΐομαι αἰνὸν ὄνειρον
ἐλθέμεν: ἦ κ’ ἀσπαστὸν ἐμοὶ καὶ παιδὶ γένοιτο.

And then prudent Penelopeia said to him,
“Stranger, dreams are wayward and mysterious
things, and they don’t all come true,
since they stray through not one gate, but two:
one made of horn and the other of ivory.
Those that come through the carved ivory
are wily and carry false messages,
but those that come out of the polished horn
come true whenever one might see them.
But I doubt my weird dream came from there;
oh, it would’ve been so welcome to me and my son...”

(Homeros, Odusseia XIX 559–69, as translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly. There’s some cute alliteration in the original: elephantos “ivory” with elephairontai “wily,” and keraon “horn” with [etuma] krainousi “come [true].”)

Something in the air of late—may your dreams issue through the gate of horn...

5 May 2025: The Distinguishing Mark

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

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

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

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

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

6 May 2025: Hesiodos’s Sources

εἰπεῖν· Γῆς παῖς εἰμι καὶ Οὐρανοῦ ἀστερόεντος,
αὐτὰρ ἐμοὶ γένος Οὐράνιον· τόδε δ’ ἴστε καὶ αὐτοί.
δίψηι δ’ εἰμὶ αὔη καὶ ἀπόλλυμαι. ἀλλὰ δότ’ αἶψα
ψυχρὸν ὕδωρ προρέον τῆς Μνημοσύνης ἀπὸ λίμνης.

To say: "I am a child of Earth and starry Heaven,
but my race is of Heaven—even you yourselves know this—
and I am parched with thirst and dying; so, quick, please give me
the cool water flowing forth from the pool of Memory."

(The Petelia Tablet, ll. 6–9a. Note that "dying," apollumai, is a pun with Apollon.)

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

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

χαίρετε τέκνα Διός, δότε δ᾽ ἱμερόεσσαν ἀοιδήν·
κλείετε δ᾽ ἀθανάτων ἱερὸν γένος αἰὲν ἐόντων,
οἳ Γῆς τ᾽ ἐξεγένοντο καὶ Οὐρανοῦ ἀστερόεντος,
Νυκτός τε δνοφερῆς, οὕς θ᾽ ἁλμυρὸς ἔτρεφε Πόντος.

Greetings, children of Zeus, and grant me a delightful song:
glorify the sacred race of the immortals who always are,
who were born from Earth and starry Heaven,
and from dark Night, and those who were nourished by salty Sea.

(Hesiodos, Theogony 104–7, emphasis mine.)

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

τέσσαρα γὰρ πάντων ῥιζώματα πρῶτον ἄκουε·
Ζεὺς ἀργὴς Ἥρη τε φερέσβιος ἠδ’ Ἀιδωνεύς,
Νῆστις θ’ ἣ δακρύοις τέγγει κρούνωμα βρότειον. [...]
ἐκ τῶν πάνθ’ ὅσα τ’ ἦν ὅσα τ’ ἔστι καὶ ἔσται ὀπίσσω,
δέδρεά τ’ ὲβλάστησε καὶ ἀνέρες ἠδὲ γυναῖκες,
θῆρές τ’ οἰωνοί τε καὶ ὑδατοθρέμμονες ἰχθῦς,
καί τε θεοὶ δολιχαίωνες τιμῇσι φέριστοι.

First, hear of the four roots of all things:
shining Zeus and life-giving Hera and Aidoneus
and Nestis, who wets the springs of mortals with her tears. [...]
From these all things were and are and will be:
sprouting trees and men and women,
beasts and birds and water-dwelling fish,
even long-living, most-exalted gods.

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

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

𓌀

8 May 2025: Mnemosune

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Ikkyu.)

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

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

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

8 May 2025

ἀλλ’ ὅτε δὴ διὰ νήσου ἰὼν ἤλυξα ἑταίρους,
χεῖρας νιψάμενος, ὅθ’ ἐπὶ σκέπας ἦν ἀνέμοιο,
ἠρώμην πάντεσσι θεοῖς οἳ Ὄλυμπον ἔχουσιν:
οἱ δ’ ἄρα μοι γλυκὺν ὕπνον ἐπὶ βλεφάροισιν ἔχευαν.
Εὐρύλοχος δ’ ἑτάροισι κακῆς ἐξήρχετο βουλῆς:
κέκλυτέ μευ μύθων κακά περ πάσχοντες ἑταῖροι.
πάντες μὲν στυγεροὶ θάνατοι δειλοῖσι βροτοῖσι,
λιμῷ δ’ οἴκτιστον θανέειν καὶ πότμον ἐπισπεῖν.

But when, traversing the island, I was free of my crew,
I found a place sheltered from the winds, washed my hands,
and prayed to all the gods who hold Olumpos;
at which they poured sweet sleep over my eyelids.
But Eurulokhos brought up a wicked plan to the men:
“I know you’re in a bad lot, mateys, but listen to me:
every death a wretch can have sucks,
but the worst is to meet your doom by starving!”

(Odusseus speaking. Homeros, Odusseia XII 335-42.)

It must be remembered that starvation is inevitable in the grey wastes of Haides, where the food tastes as dust and nourishes likewise. Impiety, on the other hand, is a choice. Do you like Odusseus and call for help, that a respite might be granted you...

15 May 2025

"Seijo, the Chinese girl," observed Goso, "had two souls, one always sick at home and the other in the city, a married woman with two children. Which was the true soul?" [...]

The clouds and moon are the same.
The mountains and valleys are different.
Each is blessed in its own way.
One is. Two are.

(Wumen Huikai, The Gateless Gate XXXV. The case is adapted by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki, while the verse is adapted by myself.)

16 May 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

21 May 2025: Snakes and Ladders

☤

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

24 May 2025: Excelsior

Archimedes, the Sicilian, asked for a fulcrum situated outside of the earth to move the earth, saying: “Whilst I inhabit it I cannot act upon it.”

(Synesios on Dreams IV, as translated by Isaac Myer.)

Arithmetical truth cannot be defined in arithmetic.

(Informal statement of Tarski’s Undefinability Theorem.)

From any given system, one hasn’t the perspective to make sense of that system. For that, one needs a perspective outside the system.

This has two implications. First, it makes sense of why the infinite becomes finite in an attempt to know itself: there is nothing outside of God, and so an outside perspective must be constructed, so that part of God may come to know God in part. Second, it perhaps explains why we strive ever higher: if we have questions about the system, it is only by ascending to the next higher system that we can answer those questions, causing us to rise until we return to God.

31 May 2025

When Ts’ui-wei was asked about the meaning of Buddhism, he answered: "Wait until there is no one around, and I will tell you." Some time later the monk approached him again, saying: "There is nobody here now. Please answer me." Ts’ui-wei led him out into the garden and went over to the bamboo grove, saying nothing. Still the monk did not understand, so at last Ts’ui-wei said, "Here is a tall bamboo; there is a short one!"

(Shi Daoyuan, The Transmission of the Lamp XV ccclxiii; as retold by Alan Watts, The Way of Zen II i.)

1 Jun 2025

ἀλλὰ φόωσδε τάχιστα λιλαίεο: ταῦτα δὲ πάντα
ἴσθ’, ἵνα καὶ μετόπισθε τεῇ εἴπῃσθα γυναικί.

But anxiously hasten to the light, and remember all this,
so that you can tell your wife even after.

(Antikleia speaking to Odusseus. Homeros, Odusseia XI 223–4, as translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly.)

ἀλλ᾽ οὔτ᾽ ἀπολέσθαι τὰ κακὰ δυνατόν, ὦ Θεόδωρε— ὑπεναντίον γάρ τι τῷ ἀγαθῷ ἀεὶ εἶναι ἀνάγκη—οὔτ᾽ ἐν θεοῖς αὐτὰ ἱδρῦσθαι, τὴν δὲ θνητὴν φύσιν καὶ τόνδε τὸν τόπον περιπολεῖ ἐξ ἀνάγκης. διὸ καὶ πειρᾶσθαι χρὴ ἐνθένδε ἐκεῖσε φεύγειν ὅτι τάχιστα. φυγὴ δὲ ὁμοίωσις θεῷ κατὰ τὸ δυνατόν: ὁμοίωσις δὲ δίκαιον καὶ ὅσιον μετὰ φρονήσεως γενέσθαι.

But it is impossible that evils should be done away with, Theodoros, for there must always be something opposed to the good; and they cannot have their place among the gods, but must inevitably hover about mortal nature and this earth. Therefore we ought to try to escape from earth to the dwelling of the gods as quickly as we can; and to escape is to become like God, so far as this is possible; and to become like God is to become righteous and holy and wise.

(Sokrates lecturing Theodoros. Platon, Theaitetos 176A–B, as translated by Harold N. Fowler with minor edits by yours truly. I might translate the last phrase as "becoming righteous and pure in thought.")

Πυλάδης.
[...]
λήξαντα δ᾽ οἴκτων κἀπ᾽ ἐκεῖν᾽ ἐλθεῖν χρεών,
ὅπως τὸ κλεινὸν ὄνομα τῆς σωτηρίας
λαβόντες ἐκ γῆς βησόμεσθα βαρβάρου.
σοφῶν γὰρ ἀνδρῶν ταῦτα, μὴ ’κβάντας τύχης,
καιρὸν λαβόντας, ἡδονὰς ἄλλας λαβεῖν.

Ὀρέστης.
καλῶς ἔλεξας: τῇ τύχῃ δ᾽ οἶμαι μέλειν
τοῦδε ξὺν ἡμῖν: ἢν δέ τις πρόθυμος ᾖ,
σθένειν τὸ θεῖον μᾶλλον εἰκότως ἔχει.

[Orestes and Iphigenia are tearfully reunited, but Orestes’s comrade, Pulades, reminds them of the danger they’re in.]

Pulades. [...] But stop crying, we have to focus on other things so that we can obtain that glorious label of "salvation" and escape this foreign land: wise men seize the moment, lest they snub Lady Luck for the wiles of others!

Orestes. Well said!—but I think She will support us in that, since the more one strives, the more the gods strive for them.

(Euripedes, Iphigenia in Tauris 904–11, as loosely translated by yours truly. "Lady Luck" is Tukhe, the gods’ providence or good fortune.)

4 Jun 2025: Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore...

ἦ τοι μὲν ξανθὸν Γανυμήδεα μητιέτα Ζεὺς
ἥρπασε ὃν διὰ κάλλος, ἵν᾽ ἀθανάτοισι μετείη
καί τε Διὸς κατὰ δῶμα θεοῖς ἐπιοινοχοεύοι,
θαῦμα ἰδεῖν, πάντεσσι τετιμένος ἀθανάτοισι,
χρυσέου ἐκ κρητῆρος ἀφύσσων νέκταρ ἐρυθρόν.
Τρῶα δὲ πένθος ἄλαστον ἔχε φρένας, οὐδέ τι ᾔδει,
ὅππη οἱ φίλον υἱὸν ἀνήρπασε θέσπις ἄελλα:

You know how most-clever Zeus spirited away blonde Ganumedes
because of his beauty, to be among the deathless ones
and serve wine to the gods in the house of Zeus,
a sight to behold as he is honored by all the immortals
as he draws crimson nectar from the golden bowl.
But incessant worry gripped the heart of Tros, since he didn’t know
whither the heaven-sent cyclone had caught up his beloved boy.

(Aphrodite consoles Ankhises. Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 202–208, as translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly. Yes, it really says "cyclone!")

4 Jun 2025: Another Threefold Classification of the Ways Up

I’ve spent a lot of time pondering Hera/Athene/Aphrodite as exemplary of the ways up, but it occurs to me that there’s another way of looking at it, in terms of how many mirrors one sees God in...

I don’t properly remember where I saw Raymond Smullyan’s classification of the three ways. (Perhaps it was in Who Knows: a Study of Religious Consciousness?) In any case, he emphasizes that they are complementary rather than in conflict.

Very speculatively, I wonder if these lead upward at different rates? Hesiodos’s Muses were Watery, so perhaps the μουσικός is the patient but less demanding way of getting to the next "rung" on the ladder; I am utterly devoted to the Airy angels, and wonder if that’s where I am being led; and Plotinos, of course, had eyes only for the Highest. (It is also the case that Fire is the "1" level of the tetractys; Air the "2" level of the tetractys; and Water remains in the material level of "many.") This would account for Plotinos’s relative ordering of the three paths.

9 Jun 2025: Following the Avenue of the Sphinxes

I have no idea what the Egyptian sphinx represents—best guess is that it was originally just a lion, but some narcissistic jerk re-sculpted his face onto it—but the Greek sphinx, at least, is simply the riddle, the puzzle, the koan personified: it entices you in with it’s pretty face and soft breasts, but once you get close, it sinks its claws into you. (In fact, the word Σφίγξ "sphinx" is from the Greek σφίγξω "I will hold tight.") With that image, an entire avenue of sphinxes seems a frightening prospect, and yet here I am, traipsing down just such a path...

A while back I noted that there were two major Greek myth cycles, the "city myth" and the the "hero myth." The first of these (exemplified by the two great cycles of the Heroic age, Thebai and Troia) follows seven generations of kings as they found a city, the city’s royal line splits, the main branch fails (due to assaults from foreigners ultimately caused by a divine curse), while the secondary branch moves on to found a new city. On the other hand, the "hero myth" (exemplified by the Horos myth and the Orestes branch of the Epic Cycle), describes the structure of the world that we inhabit and describes what we can do about it; it is meant to be an example to prospective initiates, just like Athenaie says:

ἢ οὐκ ἀίεις οἷον κλέος ἔλλαβε δῖος Ὀρέστης
πάντας ἐπ’ ἀνθρώπους, ἐπεὶ ἔκτανε πατροφονῆα,
Αἴγισθον δολόμητιν, ὅ οἱ πατέρα κλυτὸν ἔκτα;
καὶ σύ, φίλος, μάλα γάρ σ’ ὁρόω καλόν τε μέγαν τε,
ἄλκιμος ἔσσ’, ἵνα τίς σε καὶ ὀψιγόνων ἐὺ εἴπῃ.

Or haven’t you heard what kind of renown noble Orestes gained
among all men when he avenged his father by murdering
that weaselly Aigisthos, who killed his illustrious father?
Likewise you, my friend—for I see that you are very handsome and well-built—
be courageous! so that even those yet to come may speak well of you.

(Athenaie, in the guise of Mentes, exhorting Telemakhos. Homeros, Odusseia I 298-302, as translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly.)

This is, in fact, why Horos never goes to Bublos or why Orestes never goes to Troia: they are drawing on the lessons of the "city myth" in order to determine their own path. The city is an abstraction or teaching to them, the stories of those who went before, rather than a lived experience. In fact, it suggests that the city is a place they want to avoid, a source of trouble! Because of this, it seems rather important to make sense of what the city is and what it means, but I’ve been in difficulty doing so. I hit upon a potential angle on it, though, that I thought might be worth walking through.

I recently mentioned the Ra Material in reference to Teiresias (himself a part of the Thebaian city myth), and while pondering this, I realized that "Ra’s" metaphysics dovetails neatly with the city myth, with "Ra’s" seven degrees of consciousness corresponding very well with the seven generations of kings; under this interpretation, the city myth describes the unfolding of the Cosmos from Source to Source, while the hero myth, situated at the end of it, tells us what we can do about it right now, today, and what we can expect to happen to us if we try.

As a disclaimer and a reminder, I’m pretty skeptical of channeled texts (and doubly so of anything "New Age") for a few reasons: first, I have a pretty strong anti-modernity bias; second, most people are incapable of reaching up to the aither to channel angels, and even if they can, it can be very difficult to tell since daimons "know how to tell many convincing lies;" third, the channelled material always reflects the biases of the person doing the channelling, and if one isn’t personally close with them, it can be very difficult to correct for these; and fourth, the "New Age" seems to largely presuppose a worldview I don’t adhere to, and involve wish-fulfilment fantasies which I’m not interested in. So this material needs to be taken with salt; please consider this post merely an attempt to expand upon my prior exploration of Teiresias in order to make a more comprehensive evaluation of the model possible.

Perhaps I should start by describing "Ra’s" view of the development of consciousness. (Or attempting to, it is not perfectly clear to me, so take this as a sketch.) Consciousness is analogized as a vibration, and this continuum of vibration is discretized into seven degrees of consciousness, just like how we break up all the possible vibrations of the air into a scale of seven notes or all the possible vibrations of the visual spectrum into seven colors. Since souls are just a vehicle for consciousness, we inherently possess the capacity to vibrate in any harmony of frequencies, at least potentially; but in practice, one has to "climb the scale" a bit at a time, from lowest vibration to highest vibration:

1. Red, which relates to being, and is the consciousness of "inanimate" objects.

2. Orange, which relates to growth and movement, and is the consciousness of plants and animals.

3. Yellow, which relates to social identity, and is the consciousness of humans. Being the vibration of identity, it is the first properly "individual" degree: red and orange are "herd" or "group" consciousness, while yellow consciousness is individual (at least once sufficiently developed).

4. Green, which relates to love, and is the consciousness of lower daimons. Love is polarized: one may give love (compassion) or take love (selfishness), and thus green consciousness is dual in nature.

5. Blue, which relates to communication and wisdom, and is the consciousness of higher daimons, though it is also (being the lowest vibration not subject to mortality) where we resonate with after death. Blue retains the polarized nature of green; the positive pole is the collective search of understanding (collaboration), while the negative pole is the individual search of understanding (hoarding knowledge).

6. Indigo, which relates to universality, and is the consciousness of angels. Unlike green and blue, indigo is not meaningfully polarized, because of the nature of universality; negatively-polarized individuals, having mastered wisdom, come to understand this and reorient themselves positively as they endeavor to comprehend the All.

7. Violet, which is related to transcendance and unity. This is, in a sense, rejoining the All and moving on to a new "octave" of existence, in which one co-creates the universe as and with God. (At least, apparently: "Ra" claimed to be of indigo consciousness, themselves, and claimed only secondhand knowledge about violet consciousness from its own teachers.)

Apparently souls usually ascend as groups: that is to say, the group of what we now call "human souls" all passed through the red stage more-or-less together, then the orange stage more-or-less together, and are now working through the yellow stage more-or-less together. ("Ra" says the reason why the earth is such a mess is that, apparently unusually, humans aren’t developing consistently: a few are polarizing positively, a few others are polarizing negatively, and the vast majority aren’t polarizing at all. Evidently conditions are much smoother in the common case where the group develops together.) There are uncommon exceptions to souls developing as a group, however: some people are souls of a higher degree, who incarnate as humans in order to teach and guide; while, conversely, some few human souls "jump the tracks" and, through spiritual practices or divine support or sometimes even by accident, behold God naked and become able to ascend separately from the rest of their group.

I think that’s enough about "Ra’s" metaphysics to get on with. So far so good, and other than the emphasis on soul-groups, isn’t too distant from Empedokles or Plotinos.

As for the city myths, there is, unfortunately, no one good source remaining for either of them. I’d like to look at Troia today, partly because I looked at Thebai last time and partly because the Epic cycle is by far the more familiar to me. The outlines of it’s history can be more-or-less cobbled back together from bits and pieces in the Iliad and Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (which I trust) and the Library (which is my preferred fallback when a reliable source isn’t available). Here is a sketch at describing the seven generations, with citations:

1. Dardanos, the favorite mortal son of Zeus, founded Dardania at the foot of Mt. Ide. [Il. XX 215-8, 301–5.]

2. Erikhthonios, the son and successor of Dardanos, "became the richest of all men" with a herd of three thousand mares. Boreas mated with some of these mares in the form of a black stallion, adding twelve semi-divine horses to Erikhthonios’s herd. [Il. XX 219–29.]

3. Tros is the son and successor of Erikhthonios, renaming the kingdom (but not the city) of Dardania after himself. [Il. XX 230, Lib. III xii §2.]

4. At this point the royal line splits three ways, as Tros has three sons: Ilos, Assarakhos, and Ganumedes. All three are described as faultless. Ilos goes to Phrygia; he wins a prize of fifty men and women; following an oracle’s instruction, he follows a dappled cow to the hill of Ate; he asks Zeus for a sign; he is given the Palladium; and he founds Ilios on the spot. Assarakhos, meanwhile, simply succeeds to the throne of Dardania. Ganumedes, finally, being peer of the gods and most beautiful of mortals, is spirited away in a whirlwind to be the immortal, ageless cupbearer of Zeus; Tros is grieved by his son’s disappearance until Zeus sends Hermes to tell him what has become of him and give him divine horses. [Il. XX 231–5; HH 202–17; Lib. III xii §3.]

5. Laomedon is the son and successor of Ilos, and also described as faultless. Kapus is the son and successor of Assarakhos. [Il. XX 236, 239.]

6. Priamos is the son and successor of Laomedon; he is the final king of Ilios, since while Zeus loves Priamos and his city, he withdraws his favor from Priamos’s line and gives it to Aineias. Ankhises is the son and successor of Kapus; he was seduced by Aphrodite, but not made immortal; and he secretly bred his mares to the divine horses of Laomedon (descendants of those ransomed for Ganumedes), thereby stealing their bloodline. [Il. IV 44–9, V 265–72, XX 236, 300–8; HH.]

7. Hektor is the son and heir apparent of Priamos, but is killed in battle by Akhilleus. Aineias is the son and successor of Ankhises; he is the son of Aphrodite; he is most pious and beloved by the gods; and he escapes Ilios and refounds it after it is sacked. [Il. II 819–21, XX 293–308, XXII; HH.]

Now, let’s synthesize these two models. I don’t think this is too difficult! The seven kings can obviously be linked to the seven degrees of consciousness, with the line of descent showing the progression of consciousness (e.g. orange follows red just as Erikthonios follows Dardanos), and with the split among the sons of Tros showing the split in polarization at the green level of consciousness (e.g. just as, after Tros, the Troad has two kingdoms, Dardania and Ilios, so too does consciousness have two polarities after yellow). Everything else falls out naturally from there.

Mt. Ide (traditionally from ἴδη "woods," as in a place of material to harvest and work with) is the world-axis or ladder of consciousness, which is why Zeus sits atop it and watches all. The hill of Ate (Ἄτη "blindness, recklessness") is presumably where Zeus threw her after Hera tricked him into recklessly making Iphikles king rather than Herakles (cf. Il. XIX 91–136), clearly a place where a lack of foresight makes one deviate from the intended course. Dardania (apparently related to the onomatapoeic δάρδα darda "bee," like "bumble" in English, and an appropriate name for cooperation, as a hive of bees work together for the good of all) is the positive polarization of consciousness, while Ilios (which Ilos, of course, selfishly named for himself) is the negative polarization of consciousness, distant from Ide but still in sight of it (as one can never really escape divinity).

Dardania is founded by Dardanos at the foot of Ide since red consciousness is foundational, inherently positive, and where everything begins; while Ilios is founded by Ilos on Ate since green consciousness is the first that can be negatively polarized (though doing so is short-sighted). Nonetheless, each of Tros’s three children are described as ἀμύμονες "without blemish," because all is one, so to love others and to love self are both to love God. However, Tros has a third faultless son: Ganumedes; Xenophon’s Sokrates (Sumposion VIII xxx) makes the case that Ganumedes was beautiful in soul, and I likewise think that Ganumedes is a mythic representation of how peculiarly virtuous souls can short-circuit the usual path of growth through intensive self-development and/or devotion to divinity. Zeus withdraws his favor from Priam because negative polarization halts at the indigo level (thus ending the line of Ilos), and Hektor dies in battle because it is not possible for a negative polarization to transcend. Aineias refounds Ilios because the result of returning to the One is to co-create the next "octave" of consciousness.

Homeros goes to particular lengths to talk about horses (maybe they should have called him Φίλιππος Phillip "horse fancier"), so these must be noteworthy for some reason. I suppose that while the kings represent the levels of consciousness in general, the horses must represent their property; that is, specific individuals or groups of individuals within those levels of consciousness. Perhaps the wealth of Erikhthonios indicates the vast speciation of the natural world, while the offspring of Boreas ("the North Wind") indicates that only some of the many species of animals are judged desirable enough to become vessels of the yellow level (e.g. are imbued with "breath" or "wind," that is, individual soul); perhaps the horses Zeus gifts to Ilos indicate that while some beautiful souls may leave the group, the group is not neglected, but is in fact given support in recompense for their loss in order to maintain balance; that Ankhises breeds his horses with the descendents of these perhaps suggests that these beautiful souls join groups of the indigo level ("go to be with the angels"). These kinds of things aren’t really discussed in the Ra Material so far as I recall, though, so this is all not-terribly-deep guesswork based strictly on the symbolism in the myth.

Finally, a few miscellaneous notes from while I was working my way through all this:

• I have long wondered why Homeros is so very down on Aphrodite; she seems to me to be among the nicest of the gods. One nice thing about this interpretation of the city myth is that it makes sense of this. Aphrodite is love, and loving mode of consciousness—green—is where polarization takes place; since Ilios is the negative polarization, which is ultimately incapable of returning to the source, this is the reason for the city’s downfall. In fact, that Zeus refuses to adjudicate the apple to any of the goddesses indicates that God has given us free will to choose our paths; that Paris has to choose between Aphrodite (=love=green?), Athene (=wisdom=blue?), and Hera (=universality=indigo?) indicates that these are the levels affected by choice of polarization; that Paris chooses Aphrodite for reasons of self-gratification reinforces the recklessness (ate) of the negative polarization in general.

• I’m not really prepared to do a deep-dive on the Thebaian myth yet, but while we’re talking about sphinxes, it’s worth noting that Oidipous, being of the fifth royal generation, would, by this theory, be of the blue, or wisdom, degree of consciousness. This makes his solving of the sphinx’s riddle—a test of wisdom—pretty appropriate!

• If you’ll recall in the Horos-myth, I likened Thoth to "experience," the reason or purpose behind climbing the ladder of consciousness: so God-in-part can come to know part-of-God. Thoth is married to Maat, the "necessity" of this occurring. It is noteworthy that the child of Thoth and Maat is Seshat "scribess," who is depicted with two cow horns and a seven-petalled flower above her head. It is plausible to me that "scribess" is a reference to consciousness being that which observes and records (cf. Od. XI 223–4) and the seven-petalled flower is indicative of the seven modes of consciousness here described:

  𓋇

  This would, of course, presuppose that "Ra" is correct in saying that they influenced the development of Egypt with their teachings.

18 Jun 2025: Attempting to Decipher the Hieroglyphs

I realized something fun while trying to read one of my favorite parts of the Iliad in Greek:

ἐν μὲν γαῖαν ἔτευξ’, ἐν δ’ οὐρανόν, ἐν δὲ θάλασσαν,
ἠέλιόν τ’ ἀκάμαντα σελήνην τε πλήθουσαν,
ἐν δὲ τὰ τείρεα πάντα, τά τ’ οὐρανὸς ἐστεφάνωται,
Πληϊάδας θ’ Ὑάδας τε τό τε σθένος Ὠρίωνος
Ἄρκτόν θ’, ἣν καὶ Ἄμαξαν ἐπίκλησιν καλέουσιν,
ἥ τ’ αὐτοῦ στρέφεται καί τ’ Ὠρίωνα δοκεύει,
οἴη δ’ ἄμμορός ἐστι λοετρῶν Ὠκεανοῖο.

On it, he made the earth, the sky, the sea,
the sun that never sleeps, the swelling moon,
and all the signs which circle the heavens:
the Pleiades, the Huades, mighty Orion,
and the Bear (which they also call the Wagon),
which always spins in place, watching Orion closely,
and, alone, being free of bathing in the Ocean.

(Hephaistos decorates the shield of Akhilleus. Homeros, Iliad XVIII 483–9, as translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly.)

This is, in fact, almost all that is said of the hieroglyphs on the walls of the great Temple by the archaic Poets. The Homeros of the Iliad makes one other reference to the skies:

τὸν δ’ ὃ γέρων Πρίαμος πρῶτος ἴδεν ὀφθαλμοῖσι
παμφαίνονθ’ ὥς τ’ ἀστέρ’ ἐπεσσύμενον πεδίοιο,
ὅς ῥά τ’ ὀπώρης εἶσιν, ἀρίζηλοι δέ οἱ αὐγαὶ
φαίνονται πολλοῖσι μετ’ ἀστράσι νυκτὸς ἀμολγῷ,
ὅν τε κύν’ Ὠρίωνος ἐπίκλησιν καλέουσι.
λαμπρότατος μὲν ὅ γ’ ἐστί, κακὸν δέ τε σῆμα τέτυκται,
καί τε φέρει πολλὸν πυρετὸν δειλοῖσι βροτοῖσιν:

And first the old man Priamos saw him with his eyes
charging the plain and shining like that star
which rises in late summer, whose conspicuous twinkling
outshines the many stars in the dead of night,
and which they call by the name "the dog of Orion."
It is the brightest of all, but it is made out to be an evil sign,
for it brings much heat to wretched mortals; [...]

(Priamos sees Akhilleus in his divine armor. Homeros, Iliad XXII 25–31, as translated—hopefully not too badly!—by yours truly. The precision of "dead of night" is doubtful, since ἀμολγῷ is a hapax legomenon, but the gist is clear enough.)

Meanwhile, Hesiodos adds agricultural timing to the rising and setting of these but mentions no other celestial figures. "The Bear" is the Greek name, and "the Wagon" the Mesopotamian name, for the constellation we Americans call "the Big Dipper." That Orion and the Big Dipper and Sirius are emphasized is surely no surprise, as even a city kid like me in a misbegotten age like this one recognizes these three beyond all others. The Pleiades and Huades are a little surprising—even knowing where to look I have not managed to identify them—but I suppose that, given their intimate connection with trade (Pleiades means "sailors") and agriculture (Huades means "rain-bringers"), their import to the Greeks is obvious enough.

But let me focus on the Bear’s behavior: always watching Orion and never going near the water. "The sea" must be the horizon, as the Big Dipper is far enough north that it remains in the sky all year round at the latitude of Greece. Presumably, then, the sky is simply heaven, and the "underworld" is the part of the sky below the horizon which we do not see.

Now, I have said before that Osiris is Orion, the "great man of heaven;" that Horos is Sirius, his son and the brightest star of heaven, literally following Orion’s footsteps; and that Isis and Anoubis are Argo Navis and Canopus, searching for Osiris in their little boat together. We might see Egypt as heaven, the sea as the horizon, and Bublos as the underworld. The original home of Osiris is obviously heaven, but Seth kills him and he floats to the ocean, which seems a clear reference to Orion falling below the horizon; Isis follows him and brings him back from the underworld, which is just as clear a reference to Argo Navis following Orion in the sky and Orion rising back up above the horizon again. (Indeed, after he returns, the boat becomes visible again, as Isis searches for Osiris’s pieces.) That Osiris is "king of Duat" may be a reference to the fact that he is the most conspicuous constellation in the southern sky, and perhaps then it is no surprise that Odusseus saw Orion when he went to Haides.

I wonder if the Greeks got their star lore from Egypt (presumably via Syria—noting Homeros’s reference to "the Wagon," and noting that the name Orion is believed to be from Akkadian uru-anna "light of heaven"); if so, then perhaps it is no accident that the Bear is the only other constellation mentioned. Who watches Osiris carefully and never leaves Egypt? Why, Seth does; and Plutarch even tells us (Isis and Osiris §21, though be advised that I ignore his celestial associations for Isis and Horos) that the Egyptians associate the Bear with Seth. (I can even sorta see the Seth-animal in the shape of the Bear.) So perhaps we have another piece of the myth, still written in the stars.

As for the Pleiades, these are not directly referenced as far as I can tell in the Egyptian myth (though perhaps these are the servant-girls of Astarte which invite Isis into the palace). It seems noteworthy that Osiris was forced to the sea unwillingly, while Orion chases the Pleiades into the sea; perhaps this is why the Greeks emphasize sensual desire as the cause of the fall of the soul, while the Egyptians seem to have seen it more as simple necessity.

Very speculatively, I wonder if Thoueris and the serpent are the Little Dipper (an obvious choice for the consort of the Big Dipper) and the constellation Draco, respectively; the Little Dipper defecting to Horos because Polaris points the way North, and Horos begins his upward journey once she joins him. Certainly, the Staff of Asklepios—another symbol of the soul’s purification—is a reference to the world axis, topped by Polaris, around which a great serpent is coiled...

26 Jun 2025

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name;
And for that name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.

(Juliet speaking. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet II ii.)

"Why do you need a new name to get well?"

"Only the right name gives beings and things their reality," she said. "A wrong name makes everything unreal. That’s what lies do."

(Atreyu interrogating the Childlike Empress. Michael Ende, The Neverending Story XI, as translated by Ralph Manheim. "Atreyu," incidentally, means "the Son of All," as he was an orphan raised by the whole village.)

It is a bit odd that the convention in English is to translate American Indian names (e.g. we call the famous Lakota "Crazy Horse" and not "Tȟašúŋke Witkó") but that we transliterate Ancient Greek names (e.g. we call the famous Athenian "Platon" and not "Broad-Shoulders"). This is usually said to be "racist," as if we are looking down on American Indians, but I think the opposite, that we should rather translate the names of other languages so that their meaning isn’t veiled: the more I study Greek, and the more I study the Mysteries, the more clear it is to me that names are everything and are worth the closest study.

(Indeed, while I am estranged from my family, I am grateful for the name they gave me: Ἰάσων Jason "of Iaso," that is, a dedication to the goddess of recuperation from disease, which has been the purpose of this life—and, indeed, is the meaning behind the myth of my heroic namesake.)

Here’s a few miscellaneous name-notes I’ve run across recently as I struggle my way through Homeros.

• νεφεληγερέτα Ζεύς nephelegereta Zeus is usually translated "Zeus Cloud-Gatherer," with the epithet traditionally derived from νεφελη-ἀγείρετα nephele-ageireta "who gathers clouds to himself;" but I wonder if it is, in fact, the simpler νεφελη-γερέτα nephele-gereta "who was given the clouds as his king’s prerogative" (cf. Homeros, Iliad XV 187–93).

• Humans are often called μερόπων ἀνθρώπων meropon anthropon "humans of divided voice (e.g. speak in words);" e.g. treating language as a differentiator between men and beasts. It occurs to me that the first men didn’t speak, though; speech was the gift of Hermeias to Πανδώρα Pandora "all-gifted" (cf. Hesiodos, Works and Days 77–80), and it is only her and presumably her descendants that have the ability to speak. (This is all of present humankind, of course, via Pandora’s daughter Purrha, who survived the flood alongside Deukalion.) So the gift was a curse, but the curse was also a gift—but then, I suppose μηχανεύς Ζεύς mekhaneus Zeus "Zeus Contriver" never does anything for merely one reason...

• I find it interesting that Homeros calls the constellations τείρεα teirea "signs," since the famous prophet Τειρεσίας Teiresias "sign-reader" is the quintessential Master of the Mysteries (being the savior of Thebai, the initiator of Odusseus, and the only mortal who retained hits wits beyond death); this reinforces, I think, my theory that the constellations are (or, perhaps, were) meant to be the hieroglyphs on the walls of the Great Temple which Plotinos so often refers to (cf. Enneads II iii "Are the Stars Causes?" §7, Enneads V viii "On the Intellectual Beauty" §6; Enneads VI ix "On the Good, or the One" §11). That is, I think we are being exhorted to be like Teiresias and learn to "read the signs" for ourselves!

30 Jun 2025

Digging through my folder of random pictures, I stumbled across this silly nonsense I made for my daughter a while back:

Saint George, his noble steed, and that dragon are all made out of the exact same origami model as that mob of birds I posted several years ago. In light of my recent studies, I award no points for guessing where our plucky hero seems to have originated...

6 Jul 2025

I wonder if we have a conflation of historical and mythological in the accounts of Hyperborea.

Diodoros of Sicily tells us (Library of History II xlvii) that Hyperborea is an island larger than Sicily north of Celtia, noting that Leto was born and Apollon peculiarly honored there. He says that the moon is much closer there, so much so that one can even see the mountains on it.

Bakkhulides (Ode 3) tells us that King Kroisos of Ludia, when his city was besieged, set a pyre for himself and his family, but that Apollon put out the pyre and took he and his family away to Hyperborea on account of his piety. Herodotos (Histories I §87) gives a more mundane account, recognizing the rescue of Apollon but simply saying that he became the slave of Kurus the Great.

We see in the contrast of Bakkhulides and Herodotos a sort of mundanizing of the mysterious: what to Bakkhulides is a spiriting away is merely the learning of a lesson to Herodotos. I wonder if we see the same in Diodoros: was Leto’s Hyperborea originally a purely mythic place, which was later conflated with a more mundane "Hyperborea" by Diodoros? This would at least be no surprise, as Diodoros explicitly mentions his indebtedness "to those writers who have composed universal histories" (referring certainly to at least Herodotos), and thus he might be expected to follow Herodotos’s historicizing tendency.

If this is so, it is perhaps mistaken to think that Apollon came to Greece from the literal, physical island of Britain; one might presume that the Hyperborea is "beyond the north wind" in a metaphysical sense, thus perhaps linking it with Ploutarkhos’s middle world (related, as we are told, from people beyond Britain, who also describe the geography of the lunar surface); that is, the world where we go after the first death but before the second; that is, the world of Water.

This is all to perhaps lend weight to the arm of the scale which holds that Apollon simply came from beyond the sensible world to offer those of us poor mortals who cry for help in this dark world of Earth a faster way out than the usual should we require it.

8 Jul 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8 Jul 2025

Oh! I can’t believe I missed this, it seems so obvious in hindsight.

In Porphurios’s Life of Plotinos (§10), he writes that Plotinos’s head student, Amelios, φιλοθύτου γεγονότος "grew ritualistic" and took to frequenting the temples on holy days and once invited his teacher along to the feasts of the gods. Plotinos answered him,

ἐκείνους δεῖ πρὸς ἐμὲ ἔρχεσθαι, οὐκ ἐμὲ πρὸς ἐκείνους.

It is necessary for them to come to me, not I to them.

(Translation mine.)

Amelios, Porphurios, and the rest of the students were apparently so flabbergasted by this that they couldn’t bring themselves to ask what he meant.

Now, a lot of people have theories about this. Dodds (The Parmenides of Plato and the Origin of the Neoplatonic "One") figures Plotinos wasn’t religious and was just trying to get Amelios to stop pestering him. Armstrong (footnote to his translation) figures that Plotinos considered that only daimons of the lower order go round the temples (as places of blood sacrifice) and thus were beneath him (intent, as he was, on the highest). Three years ago (almost to the day!) I myself made the similar case that Plotinos was after something greater than the mundane gods.

Looking at it again, I think it’s much simpler than that (and think Plotinos was much humbler than Porphurios is making him out to be). Plotinos saw no point in going because the experience of divinity is a gift. There is no way a mortal can hope to chase and seize the god; the only way is for the god to look kindly on the mortal. So what would be the point in attending the sacrifices or observing the rituals? The best one can do is to patiently purify and prepare themselves in the hope the god chooses to illumine their efforts.

9 Jul 2025: The Neverending Story

I’ve been studying the Egyptian mysteries of Isis, Osiris, and Horos; I have no idea where they came from, though it seems noteworthy that they are illustrated in the stars, focusing on the heliacal rising and setting of various constellations along the galactic plane. Many of the other mysteries we know about—Innana/Ishtar and Dumuzid, Astarte and Baal, Aphrodite and Adonis, the Eleusinian mysteries, the Dionusian mysteries, the Apolline mysteries, the house of Oikles and some other parts of the Thebaian myth (like Oidipous), the house of Tantalos, the house of Danaus, Atalante, and (I think, though I have not studied it carefully yet) the Argonautica—all seem to derive from these Egyptian mysteries, as they share the same structure and tell the same story.

While I haven’t dug very deeply into them, there seem to also have been the Mesopotamian mysteries of Gilgamesh and Enkidu; I also have no idea where they came from, though it seems noteworthy that they are also illustrated in the stars, focusing (as far as I can tell) on the movement of the planets along the constellations of the ecliptic plane. Some others of the mysteries, most notably Herakles, seem to derive from these Mesopotamian mysteries, as they share the same structure and tell the same story.

It’s interesting to me that we see a lot of crossover and interaction between these two mysteries: for example, Gilgamesh spurning Ishtar (noting that Taurus, the Bull of Heaven, marks the intersection of the ecliptic and galactic planes just as it marks the intersection of the two myths), Herakles besieging Thebai, Jason taking Herakles on his voyage, etc. I have no idea if these indicate two parts of one greater story, or if they indicate the priority of one set of mysteries over the other, or if they simply show conflict between the different mystery schools.

I suppose that the mysteries are simply a mystery.

Occasionally, at long intervals, we see that an individual takes up the mysteries and sets out to retell them in their own way. "Homeros" gave us perhaps the classic version of them in the Odusseia. Virgil retold an explicitly civic Roman version of them in the Aeneid. Apuleius retold an explicitly Platonist version of them in Cupid and Psyche. I haven’t yet read it myself, but I’m told that Dante has retold a Christian-Neoplatonist version of them in the Divine Comedy. Within their various contexts, these are praiseworthy works, worthy of respect and ripe for contemplation.

My daughter and I recently finished reading Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story, which follows in the same tradition, telling an explicitly Western-occult-revival version of the mysteries. I don’t know who Ende studied under, but he certainly mastered at least the Lesser Mysteries, as he has missed nothing and provides worthy commentary and color on each point. One could do far worse than spending a year meditating one’s way through it.

It’s also, of course, an engaging narrative: my daughter—who, of course, has not studied the mysteries at all—loved it. If you haven’t read it (and especially if you’ve seen the film, which is to the book as lead is to gold), I highly recommend it. It’s worthy of your time.

15 Jul 2025

I was down the other day, and whenever I’m down I tend to think about angels, and that got me poking into the textual history of the Works and Days. It turns out that many variants of Hesiodos were current even in antiquity, and that seems to be reflected in what we have access to, today.

The description of the daimons that I was familiar with is the scholarly accepted version of a century ago:

(The translation is my own, hopefully not too bad!)

As it turns out, lines 122–3 are those given by Platon in the Kratulos; the problem with this is that it disagrees with a different version given by Platon in the Republic, the version given by Ploutarkhos in his commentary on the poem, and the version given by Proklos in his commentary. (It seems that all of the manuscripts of the poem that we have adhere pretty closely to Proklos’s version, so it was a wilful choice to favor Platon over it, and to favor the Kratulos over the Republic!) It seems Platon bowdlerized the lines in order to fit the purposes of his dialogues (both literary—these are lines recalled from memory by Sokrates—and philosophical—as he uses the descriptions to argue for theological points).

On top of that, lines 124–5 are copied from elsewhere in the poem and appear to be either a gloss or an error in the mainline branch of the manuscripts, and are apparently not duplicated elsewhere (e.g. in Proklos); M. L. West notes that a "police force administering legal justice" is quite different from the Providential givers of all good things described by the rest of the lines; and the grammatical context changes from line to line, too, which seems suspicious (though maybe I’m just not familiar enough with Hesiodos’s Greek, which always feels rather crabbed to me, at least by comparison with Homeros).

At any rate, the current scholarly text, by M. L. West, gives the same section as follows:

(Translation also my own.)

We see that the gist is the same, but the two differ in almost every detail. I did a pass previously over the doctrine of guardian angels, but noticing the differences in the modern accepted text, I thought I should do so again:

1. χρύσεον "golden:" incorruptible, hence never contaminated by material life. (This stands to reason; if material beings are granted guardians [#6, below] by Providence [#3, below] so that we have the potential for purification, then the guardians must themselves have never been material, since if they were, they would need their own guardians, who would need their own guardians, etc., which would be an infinite regress, which is absurd. So the guardians themselves must have never been material at any time.)

2. πρώτιστα "first of all:" that is, the race of not-gods that is closest to the gods.

3. τοὶ μὲν δαίμονες εἰσι Διὸς μεγάλου διὰ βουλάς "they are daimons by the will of great Zeus:" Providence, being good, always ensures that there is a pathway to good for all. Each soul’s daimon (from δαίομαι "to distribute"), therefore, is the means by which Providence acts (e.g. is distributed to mortals).

4. ἐσθλοί "righteous:" morally good, virtuous, faithful; does not have the capacity for bad, because they act out the will of Zeus.

5. ἐπιχθόνιοι "on the earth:" as opposed to in heaven (where the gods live) or below the earth in Tartarus (where the dead live—that is, us), indicating their middle status.

6. φύλακες θνητῶν ἀνθρώπων "guardians of mortal men:" daimons protect mortals because mortals don’t have the perceptive capacity or wisdom to protect themselves.

7. πλουτοδόται: καὶ τοῦτο γέρας βασιλήιον ἔσχον "givers of wealth (for they have this royal privilege also):" in archaic Greece, social status was not determined by how much you owned (as it is today), but how much and how freely you gave to others. Kings were kings because they had the greatest capacity to give. This same thread is taken up by Plotinos, who assigns higher position to those who are able give more freely of themselves (e.g. gods are gods because they can give without diminishment, and Zeus is king of the gods because Zeus is pre-eminent in doing so). Daimons are the agents by which the gods give: while the gods give universally, daimons give individually, mortals receive individually, once again demonstrating the middle rank of daimons.

16 Jul 2025: Smintheus

So I’m presently reading Herodotos through for fun, having only read bits and pieces from him before. Today I came across this:

Ἀπάγονται δὲ οἱ αἰέλουροι ἀποθανόντες ἐς ἱρὰς στέγας, ἔνθα θάπτονται ταριχευθέντες, ἐν Βουβάστι πόλι [...]. τὰς δὲ μυγαλᾶς καὶ τοὺς ἴρηκας ἀπάγουσι ἐς Βουτοῦν πόλιν, τὰς δὲ ἴβις ἐς Ἑρμέω πόλιν.

Dead cats are taken away into sacred buildings, where they are embalmed and buried, in the city of Bubastis [...]. Field mice and falcons are taken away to Buto, ibises to the city of Hermes.

(Herodotos, Histories II §67, as translated by A. D. Godley with minor edits by yours truly.)

This struck me, since Bubastis (hence the cat) was the holy place of Bastet (Artemis/Hekate), while Buto (hence the mouse and falcon) was the holy place of Horos (Apollon), being his birthplace. Now, we’re very familiar with cats, but the Greeks weren’t; they kept weasels to hunt mice, and while we tell silly stories about cats and mice, they told the same sorts of stories about weasels and mice. Here’s a dopey example I ran across back when I was studying Teiresias:

[...] δειπνῆσαι ἐν τοῖς Θέτιδος καὶ Πηλέως γάμοις. ἔνθα ἐρίσαι περὶ κάλλους τήν τε Ἀφροδίτην καὶ τὰς Χάριτας, αἷς ὀνόματα Πασιθέη Καλὴ καὶ Εὐφροσύνη. τὸν δὲ δικάσαντα κρῖναι καλὴν τὴν Καλὴν, ἣν καὶ γῆμαι τὸν Ἥφαιστον, ὅθεν τὴν μὲν Ἀφροδίτην χολωθεῖσαν μεταβαλεῖν αὐτὸν εἰν γυναῖκα χερνῆτιν γραῖαν, τὴν δὲ Καλὴν χάριτας αὐτῇ ἀγαθὰς νεῖμαι καὶ εἰς Κρήτην ἀπαγαγεῖν, ἔνθα ἐρασθῆναι αὐτῆς Ἄραχνον, καὶ μιγέντα αὐχεῖν τῇ Ἀφροδίτῃ μιγῆναι. ἐφ’ ᾧ τὴν δαίμονα ὀργισθεῖσαν τὸν μὲν Ἄραχνον μεταβαλεῖν εἰς γαλῆν, Τειρεσίαν δὲ εἰς μῦν, ὅθεν καὶ ὀλίγα φησὶν ἐσθίει ὡς ἐκ γραός, καὶ μαντικός ἐστι διὰ τῶν Τειρεσίαν. ὅτι δὲ μαντικόν τι καὶ ὁ μῦς δηλοῦσιν ὅ τε χειμών, οὗ σημεῖον ἐν καιρῷ οἱ τῶν μυῶν τρισμοὶ, καὶ αἱ ἐκ τῶν οἰκιῶν φυγαὶ, ἃς διαδιδράσκουσιν ὅτε κινδυνεύοιεν καταπεσεῖν.

[Teiresias] dined at the wedding of Thetis and Peleus. A beauty contest between Aphrodite and the Graces, named Pasithea ["the goddess of all," wife of Sleep, hence refreshment], Kale ["beauty"], and Euphrosune ["happiness"], was held there. He was made judge and judged Kale the most beautiful, and she married Hephaistos, which so galled Aphrodite that she turned Teiresias into an old spinster, but Kale made her very beautiful and brought her to Crete, where Arakhnos ["spider"] fell in love with her and, having had sex with her, bragged that he lain with Aphrodite herself. This so infuriated the goddess that she turned Arakhnos into a weasel and Teiresias into a mouse, which is why they say a mouse eats so little (because it is an old woman) and why they say it can tell the future (because it is Teiresias). That it can tell the future is clear because its squeakings are a timely sign of a storm, and that it flees a house in danger of collapse.

(Eustathios of Thessolonike on the Odusseia 1665.48 ff., following Sostratos, Teiresias, as very hastily translated by yours truly—please consider it a mere paraphrase.)

Both of these—the association of Horos with mice and the association of the hero Teiresias with a mouse—of course calls to mind how Khruses, the high priest of Apollon, calls to Apollon Smintheus ("Apollon of the Mouse") to visit a plague upon the Akhaians at the beginning of the Iliad:

κλῦθί μευ ἀργυρότοξ’, ὃς Χρύσην ἀμφιβέβηκας
Κίλλάν τε ζαθέην Τενέδοιό τε ἶφι ἀνάσσεις,
Σμινθεῦ εἴ ποτέ τοι χαρίεντ’ ἐπὶ νηὸν ἔρεψα,
ἢ εἰ δή ποτέ τοι κατὰ πίονα μηρί’ ἔκηα
ταύρων ἠδ’ αἰγῶν, τὸ δέ μοι κρήηνον ἐέλδωρ:
τίσειαν Δαναοὶ ἐμὰ δάκρυα σοῖσι βέλεσσιν.

O Smintheus! sprung from fair Latona’s line,
Thou guardian Power of Cilla the divine,
Thou source of light! whom Tenedos adores,
And whose bright presence gilds thy Chrysa’s shores;
If e’er with wreaths I hung thy sacred fane,
Or fed the flames with fat of oxen slain;
God of the silver bow! thy shafts employ,
Avenge thy servant, and the Greeks destroy.

(Homeros, Iliad I 37–42, as translated by Alexander Pope.)

Evidently the ancients thought this very strange and spent a lot of ink trying to make sense of it. One example, concerning not only Apollon and mice but also weasels, runs like this:

Αἰγύπτιοι μὲν οὖν σέβοντές τε καὶ ἐκθεοῦντες γένη ζῴων διάφορα γέλωτα ὀφλισκάνουσι παρά γε τοῖς πολλοῖς: Θηβαῖοι δὲ σέβουσιν Ἕλληνες ὄντες ὡς ἀκούω γαλῆν, καὶ λέγουσί γε Ἡρακλέους αὐτὴν γενέσθαι τροφόν, ἢ τροφὸν μὲν οὐδαμῶς, καθημένης δὲ ἐπ᾽ ὠδῖσι τῆς Ἀλκμήνης καὶ τεκεῖν οὐ δυναμένης, τὴν δὲ παραδραμεῖν καὶ τοὺς τῶν ὠδίνων λῦσαι δεσμούς, καὶ προελθεῖν τὸν Ἡρακλέα καὶ ἕρπειν ἤδη.

καὶ οἱ τὴν Ἁμαξιτὸν τῆς Τρωάδος κατοικοῦντες μῦν σέβουσιν: ἔνθεν τοι καὶ τὸν Ἀπόλλω τὸν παρ᾽ αὐτοῖς τιμώμενον Σμίνθιον καλοῦσί φασιν. ἔτι γὰρ καὶ τοὺς Αἰολέας καὶ τοὺς Τρῶας τὸν μῦν προσαγορεύειν σμίνθον, ὥσπερ οὖν καὶ Αἰσχύλος ἐν τῷ Σισύφῳ ἀλλ᾽ ἀρουραῖός τίς ἐστι σμίνθος ὧδ᾽ ὑπερφυής. καὶ τρέφονται μὲν ἐν τῷ Σμινθείῳ μύες τιθασοὶ δημοσίας τροφὰς λαμβάνοντες, ὑπὸ δὲ τῷ βωμῷ φωλεύουσι λευκοί, καὶ παρὰ τῷ τρίποδι τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος ἕστηκε μῦς.

μυθολόγημα δὲ ὑπὲρ τῆσδε τῆς θρησκείας καὶ ἐκεῖνο προσακήκοα. τῶν Αἰολέων καὶ τῶν Τρώων τὰ λήια πολλὰς μυῶν μυριάδας ἐπελθούσας ἄωρα ὑποκείρειν καὶ ἀτελῆ τὰ θέρη τοῖς σπείρασιν ἀποφαίνειν. οὐκοῦν τὸν ἐν Δελφοῖς θεὸν πυνθανομένων εἰπεῖν ὅτι δεῖ θύειν Ἀπόλλωνι Σμινθεῖ, τοὺς δὲ πεισθέντας ἀπαλλαγῆναι τῆς ἐκ τῶν μυῶν ἐπιβουλῆς καὶ τὸν πυρὸν αὐτοῖς ἐς τὸν νενομισμένον ἄμητον ἀφικνεῖσθαι.

ἐπιλέγουσι δὲ ἄρα τούτοις καὶ ἐκεῖνα. ἐς ἀποικίαν Κρητῶν οἱ σταλέντες οἴκοθεν ἔκ τινος τύχης καταλαβούσης αὐτοὺς ἐδεήθησαν τοῦ Πυθίου φῆναί τινα αὐτοῖς χῶρον ἀγαθὸν καὶ ἐς τὸν συνοικισμὸν λυσιτελῆ. ἐκπίπτει δὴ λόγιον, ἔνθα ἂν αὐτοῖς οἱ γηγενεῖς πολεμήσωσιν, ἐνταῦθα καταμεῖναι καὶ ἀναστῆσαι πόλιν. οὐκοῦν ἥκουσι μὲν ἐς τὴν Ἁμαξιτὸν τήνδε καὶ στρατοπεδεύουσιν ὥστε ἀναπαύσασθαι, μυῶν δὲ ἄφατόν τι πλῆθος ἐφερπύσαν τά τε ὄχανα αὐτοῖς τῶν ἀσπίδων διέτραγε καὶ τὰς τῶν τόξων νευρὰς διέφαγεν: οἳ δὲ ἄρα συνέβαλον τούτους ἐκείνους εἶναι τοὺς γηγενεῖς, καὶ μέντοι καὶ ἐς ἀπορίαν ἥκοντες τῶν ἀμυντηρίων τόνδε τὸν χῶρον οἰκίζουσι, καὶ Ἀπόλλωνος ἱδρύονται νεὼν Σμινθίου.

ἡ μὲν οὖν τῶν μυῶν μνήμη προήγαγεν ἡμᾶς ἐς θεολογίαν τινά, χείρους δὲ αὑτῶν οὐ γεγόναμεν καὶ τοιαῦτα προσακούσαντες.

People make fun of the Egyptians for regarding different kinds of animals as gods and worshipping them, but I hear that the Thebaians, despite being Hellenes, worship a weasel, since they say that it was the nurse of Herakles himself when he was born, or if it wasn’t his nurse, that when Alkmene was in labor and wasn’t able to give birth, it ran by and the bind on her labor was released, and Herakles was born and began to crawl right away.

And those who live in Hamaxitos in the Troad worship a mouse, and they say that for that reason they call Apollon, who they worship, by the name "Smintheus," because even today the Aioleans and the Troadians call the mouse sminthos, just like Aiskulos in his Sisyphus:

But what’s so special about a field mouse?

And in the Smintheon they keep tame mice by a tax on the people’s food, and white ones live in a hole under the altar, and a mouse stands beside the tripod of Apollon.

And those same people tell me a further story, that many myriads of mice came upon the yet unripe field crops of the Aioleans and the Troadians and cut them from beneath, causing the summer harvest to fail early. Accordingly they asked the god at Delphi and he answered that they must sacrifice to Apollon Smintheus, and they obeyed and were delivered from the treachery of the mice and their wheat attained a normal harvest.

And they also tell me another story on that topic, that a group of Cretans who had met with some bad luck were dispatched to found a colony and asked the Puthia to show them some good place where it would be advantageous to resettle, and the oracle answered that they should stop and raise a city where the "earth-born" attack them. So they came to where Hamaxitos now is and camped to rest for the night, but an uncountable multitude of mice snuck up and, scattering everywhere, ate their shield straps and bowstrings. They made the connection between these mice and the "earth-born," and anyway, now being without a means of protecting themselves [on the road], built a city and a temple to Apollon Smintheus.

Well, the mention of mice led us into some theology, but perhaps we are none the worse for hearing such stories.

(Aelian on the Nature of Animals XII v; following Strabo, Geography XIII i §48; in turn following Kallinos; as very hastily translated by yours truly—please consider it a mere paraphrase.)

But Aelien apparently misses the crucial point that Herakles’s weasel was a human originally, and was transformed into a weasel by Hera as punishment for supporting Alkmene. Here is Antoninus Liberalis’s account of the story:

Προίτου θυγάτηρ ἐν Θήβαις ἐγένετο Γαλινθιάς. αὕτη παρθένος ἦν συμπαίκτρια καὶ ἑταιρὶς Ἀλκμήνης τῆς Ἠλεκτρύωνος. ἐπεὶ δὲ Ἀλκμήνην ὁ τόκος ἤπειγε τοῦ Ἡρακλέους, Μοῖραι καὶ Εἰλείθυια πρὸς χάριν τῆς Ἥρας κατεῖχον ἐν ταῖς ὠδῖσι τὴν Ἀλκμήνην. καὶ αὗται μὲν ἐκαθέζοντο κρατοῦσαι τὰς ἑαυτῶν χεῖρας· Γαλινθιὰς δὲ δείσασα, μὴ Ἀλκμήνην ἐχστήσωσι βαρυνομένην οἱ πόνοι, δραμοῦσα παρά τε τὰς Μοίρας καὶ τὴν Εἰλείθυιαν ἐξήγγειλεν, ὅτι Διὸς βουλῆ γέγονε τῇ Ἀλκμήνῃ παῖς χόρος· αἱ δὲ ἐκείνων τιμαὶ καταλέλυνται. Πρὸς δὴ τοῦτ’ ἔκπληξις ἔλαβε τὰς μοίρας καὶ ἀνῆκαν εὐθὺς τὰς χεῖρας. Ἀλκμήνην δὲ κατέλιπον εὐθὺς αἱ ὠδῖνες· καὶ ἐγένετο Ἡρακλῆς. αἱ δὴ Μοῖραι πένθος ἐποιήσαντο καὶ τῆς Φαλινθιάδος ἀφείλοντο τὴν κορείαν, ὅτι θνητὴ τοὺς θεοὺς ἐξηπάτησε, καὶ αὐτὴν ἐπόησαν δολερὰν γαλῆν καὶ δίαιταν ἔδωκαν ἐν τῷ μυχῷ καὶ ἄμορφον ἀπέδειξαν τὴν εὐνήν· θορίσκεται μὲν γὰρ διὰ τῶν ὠτῶν, τίκτει δ’ ἀναφέρουσα τὸ κυούμενον ἐκ το τραχήλου. ταύτην Ἑκάτη πρὸς τῆν μεταβολὴν τῆς ὄψεως ᾤχτειρε καὶ ἀπέδειξεν ἱερὰν αὐτῆς διάκονον· Ἡρακλῆς δ’ ἐπεὶ ἠυξήθη, τἠν χάριν ἐμνημόνευσε καὶ αὐτῆς ἐπόησεν ἀφίδρυμα παρὰ τὸν οἶκον καὶ ἱερὰ προσήνεγκε. ταῦτα νῦν ἔτι τὰ ἱερὰ Θηβαῖοι φυλάττουσι καὶ πρὸ Ἡρακλέους ἑορῇ θύουσι Φαλινθιάδι πρώτῃ.

At Thebes Proetus had a daughter Galinthias. This maiden was playmate and companion of Alcmene, daughter of Electryon. As the birth throes for Heracles were pressing on Alcmene, the Fates and Eileithyia, as a favour to Hera, kept Alcmene in continuous birth pangs. They remained seated, each keeping their arms crossed. Galinthias, fearing that the pains of her labour would drive Alcmene mad, ran to the Fates and Eileithyia and announced that by desire of Zeus a boy had been born to Alcmene and that their prerogatives had been abolished. At all this, consternation of course overcame the Fates and they immediately let go their arms. Alcmene’s pangs ceased at once and Heracles was born. The Fates were aggrieved at this and took away the womanly parts of Galinthias since, being but a mortal, she had deceived the gods. They turned her into a deceitful weasel, making her live in crannies and gave her a grotesque way of mating. She is mounted through the ears and gives birth by bringing forth her young through the throat. Hecate felt sorry for this transformation of her appearance and appointed her a sacred servant to herself. Heracles, when he grew up, remembered the favour she had done for him and made an image of her to set by his house and offered her sacrifices. The Thebaians even now maintain these rites and, before the festival of Heracles, sacrifice to Galinthias first.

(Antoninos Liberalis, Metamorphoses XXIX, as translated by Francis Celoria.)

The mention of Hekate here is very interesting, and this leads me to my own conclusion concerning Apollon Smintheus, which ties into a theory I expressed before.

Now, one the one hand, Apollon and Hekate have a sort of connection: Hekate means "from afar," and is the feminine form of a common epithet of Apollon (e.g. as a marksman); on the other hand, the two couldn’t be more opposite: Apollon is the lord of light, while Hekate is the lady of darkness; Apollon is heavenly, while Hekate is chthonic; Apollon is associated with unity (indeed, the Neopythagoreans derived his name from ἁ-πολλόν "not many"), while Hekate is associated with multiplicity (always appearing triform). From a Neoplatonistic view, one gets the sense of Apollon guiding upwards and Hekate dragging downwards.

I think all these stories give us another angle on the same thing: Apollon is the god of mice, Hekate the goddess of weasels, and weasels eat mice. Since Apollon is the god of the mysteries, we might consider mice as his initiates; similarly, since Hekate is the goddess of magic, we might consider weasels to be magicians. Thus from these symbols it is very little wonder that most of the philosophers warned their students away from magic so vociferously: at that early stage, fired with enthusiasm for things spiritual, they could very easily be consumed by it and drawn to use spiritual means for material ends. As Lucius found out in the Golden Ass, of course, this leads nowhere.

On the other hand, Homeros tells us that Apollon is also the god of falcons, which isn’t a surprise to anyone who’s been following my Horos series:

ὣς ἄρα οἱ εἰπόντι ἐπέπτατο δεξιὸς ὄρνις,
κίρκος, Ἀπόλλωνος ταχὺς ἄγγελος: ἐν δὲ πόδεσσι
τίλλε πέλειαν ἔχων, κατὰ δὲ πτερὰ χεῦεν ἔραζε
μεσσηγὺς νηός τε καὶ αὐτοῦ Τηλεμάχοιο.

As he was saying so a bird flew towards him on the right,
a falcon, the swift messenger of Apollon; and with its feet
it plucked a pigeon it was holding, and feathers fell to the ground
between Telemakhos and his ship.

(Homeros, Odusseia XV 525–8, as translated by yours truly.)

If the association of mice with initiates and weasels with magicians is correct, then falcons are surely heroes: those who have mastered the mysteries and soar on the wings so given.

I should also note, of course, that falcons eat weasels.

17 Jul 2025

After the grievous death of his daughter, it next happened to Menkaure that an oracle was sent to him from the city of Bouto, declaring that he had but six years to live and must die in the seventh. The king deemed this unjust, and sent back to the oracle a message of reproach, blaming the god: why must he die so soon who was pious, whereas his father and his uncle had lived long, who shut up the temples, and regarded not the gods, and destroyed men? But a second utterance from the place of divination declared to him that his good deeds were the very cause of shortening his life; for he had done what was contrary to fate; Egypt should have been afflicted for an hundred and fifty years, whereof the two kings before him had been aware, but not Menkaure. Hearing this, he knew that his doom was fixed.

(Herodotos, Histories II §133, as translated by A. D. Godley with minor edits by yours truly.)

Assuming Herodotos’s story is trustworthy, this is a fantastic theological argument for something; I’m just not sure what...

21 Jul 2025

A postscript to my thoughts on Smintheus:

[The goddess] turned [...] Teiresias into a mouse, which is why they say a mouse [...] can tell the future (because it is Teiresias). That it can tell the future is clear because [...] it flees a house in danger of collapse.

(Eustathios of Thessolonike on the Odusseia 1665.48 ff.)

But as [when king Laodamas had been killed in battle,] Teiresias told [the Thebaians] to send a herald to treat with the Argives, and themselves to take to flight, they did send a herald to the enemy, and, mounting their children and women on the wagons, themselves fled from the city.

(Apollodoros, Library III vii §3, as translated by J. G. Frazer.)

Sophocles, the tragic poet, in his drama Laocoon represents Aineias, just before the taking of the city, as removing his household to Mount Ida in obedience to the orders of his father Ankhises, who recalled the injunctions of Aphrodite and from the omens that had lately happened in the case of Laocoon’s family conjectured the approaching destruction of the city. His iambics, which are spoken by a messenger, are as follows:

Now at the gates arrives the goddess’ son,
Aineas, his sire upon his shoulders borne
Aloft, while down that back by thunderbolt
Of Zeus once smit the linen mantle streams;
Surrounding them the crowd of household slaves.
There follows a multitude beyond belief
Who long to join this Phrygian colony.

(Dionusios of Halikarnassos, Roman Antiquities, as translated by Earnest Cary and Edward Spelman, with minor edits by yours truly.)

23 Jul 2025: A Few Riddles

Isn’t it interesting how Kalupso’s ("she who veils") clothing drags Odusseus down, while Leukothea’s veil buoys him up?

Isn’t it interesting how the "veil" separates us from spirit, but how the "veiled" mysteries connect us to it?

Isn’t it interesting how Loxias ("the oblique one") always shoots straight?

24 Jul 2025: Orphic Hymn to the White Goddess

Λευκοθέας, θυμίαμα, ἀρώματα.
Λευκοθέην καλέω Καδμηΐδα, δαίμονα σεμνήν,
εὐδύνατον, θρέπτειραν ἐϋστεφάνου Διονύσου.
κλῦθι, θεά πόντοιο βαθυστέρνοιο μέδουσα,
κύμασι τερπομένη, θνητῶν σώτειρα μεγίστη.
ἐν σοὶ γὰρ νηῶν πελαγοδρόμος ἄστατος ὁρμή,
μούνη δὲ θνητῶν οἰκτρὸν μόρον εἰν ἁλὶ λύεις,
οἷς ἂν ἐφορμαίνουσα φίλη σωτήριος ἔλθοις.
ἀλλά, θεὰ δέσποινα, μόλοις ἐπαρωγὸς ἐοῦσα
νηυσὶν ἐπ’ εὐσέλμοις σωτήριος εὔφρονι βουλῇ,
μύσταις ἐν πόντῳ ναυσίδρομον οὖρον ἄγουσα.

For the White Goddess. (Cense with aromatics.)
I call the White Goddess, daughter of Kadmos, august divinity,
well-able nurse of well-crowned Dionusos—
hear me, leading goddess of the deep-bosomed sea,
delighting in the waves [of adversity], great savior of mortals;
for by you ships fly unceasingly over the sea,
and alone you dissolve the lamentable fate of sea-bound mortals,
those to whom you would rush to as a rescuing friend.
But, mistress goddess, come be a helper
to well-decked ships, dispensing gracious advice,
and bring a ship-speeding stretch to sea-going initiates.

(As translated—probably very poorly as the hymns are grammatically difficult!—by yours truly.)

27 Jul 2025

Plotinos says (Enneads III ix §3) that "Soul is Matter to the Intellectual-Principle."

That is, the Intellect is matter to the One; Soul is matter to the Intellect; and Matter is matter to Nature. Conversely, Soul is spirit to Nature; the Intellect is spirit to Soul; and the One is spirit to the Intellect (insofar as the One is anything at all).

To put it another way, we say that the spirit is potential and matter is actualization; our soul is, in potential, what our body becomes in actuality. So it is that while dead, we see but do not act, and while alive, we act but do not see.

But this is only true from the perspective of the material life: the soul itself is the actualization of its potential in the Intellect. So what do souls do when free from all body? They live, just as we do, in the manner peculiar to their sphere...

29 Jul 2025

Okay, you guys, it’s driving me nuts how everyone says "evil livers" and I need to get to the bottom of it. Murray’s translation of Sallustios XIX reads,

[...] which is seen about graves, especially the graves of evil livers.

In the original, this is,

ὃ περὶ τοὺς τάφους καὶ μάλιστα τῶν κακῶς ζησάντων ὁρᾶται.

All of these are genitive case, hence "of." τῶν is the definite article. κακῶς is the adjective "bad" or "evil." ζησάντων is the past-tense active participle of ζῶ "to live," therefore... shit.

SALLUSTIOS HIMSELF SAYS "EVIL LIVERS!"

...

Okay, okay, if I’m being totally straight, Taylor’s "of such as have lived an abandoned life" is perhaps more precise than the others: I myself would translate this as "of those who have lived wickedly." But Murray and Nock are as close as you can get if you’re trying to be word-for-word.

(Also, very astute readers might remember that Stephen MacKenna says "evil-livers," too! I checked Plotinos’s Greek, though, and he’s absolved of any misdeeds: he actually says "ό κακὸς," which is just "the wicked [person].")

5 Aug 2025

One of my prized possessions, back in the day, was an over-the-top, folio-sized copy of Manly P. Hall’s The Secret Teachings of All Ages. (It didn’t survive the trip when we fled our old home, alas; but just as well, since it wasn’t the direction I needed.)

The highlight of that book, I think, was it’s extravagant full-page illustrations by John Augustus Knapp. I had occasion to be looking back over these today, and what do I see in the painting accompanying Hall’s essay on Hermetism?

woof woof

Why, it’s our old and faithful friend Wepwawet, waiting to guide us into the ruins of ancient wisdom! Hey there, buddy! Who’s a good boy?

5 Aug 2025

ὃ δ’ ἀφήμενος οὐκ ἀλεγίζει οὐδ’ ὄθεται

but he sits apart neither heeding nor caring

(Hera speaking of Zeus. Homeros, Iliad XV 106b–7a, as translated by yours truly.)

We homeschool my daughter, and the curriculum we are working from is a Christian curriculum—not surprising, I suppose, as most homeschoolers in the USA are so for religious reasons, and so most of the materials on the market cater to that. In any case, the English textbook she is studying had her working with Christian hymns today, and she was complaining about these; so, as a counterpoint, I read her a few bits and pieces from the Homeric Hymns and Orphic Hymns and Porphurios’s Hymn to the Intellect, and we discussed what the point of the hymns are, coming to the conclusion that the hymns in her book were about lowering god to the man, while the hymns I showed her were about raising man to the god. This led to a pretty interesting dialogue:

Daughter. But why should we raise ourselves to Zeus (for example)?

Me. Do you care about the cells in your body?

Daughter. What? ... No, not really. I don’t even think about them.

Me. But you are like a "cell" in the "body" of Zeus.

Daughter. So Zeus doesn’t care about us?

Me. I don’t think so. (That’s pretty different from what the hymns in your book say, isn’t it?) But you still take care of the cells in your body, don’t you?

Daughter. I don’t try to, but yeah, I guess I kinda do. I mean, if I didn’t, I’d get sick and die.

Me. I think that’s how it is with Zeus, too. He doesn’t care of us but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t take care of us. (That’s what angels are for, after all!) So to raise yourself to Zeus is to harmonize with Zeus: it’s like your cell trying to harmonize with your body. Wouldn’t your body work better if all your cells tried to be as aware of the whole as possible?

She went away very contemplative...

7 Aug 2025

I mentioned before that I think Horos is the star Sirius (Greek Σείριος "scorcher," referring to the "heat" it causes in midsummer; cf. Hesiodos, Works and Days 585) and Anoubis is the star Canopus (Greek Κάνωβος—probably derived from Anoubis—the name of the pilot of Menelaos’s (=Isis’s) ship; cf. Conon, Fifty Stories VIII; Strabo, Geography XVII i §17).

I think I’ve identified a third star: Wepwawet (𓄋𓈐𓈐𓈐 "opener of ways") is Procyon (Greek Προκύων "before-dog"), the eighth-brightest star in the entire night sky. (You can see it in the star map I posted earlier: it is the bright star to the left of Orion and above-and-to-the-left of Sirius.) Apparently the name comes because it is seen to rise before Sirius, in the same way that Wepwawet "opens the way" for the rising soul, identified with Horos/Sirius, in the Pyramid Texts. It is also (along with Sirius) more northerly than Canopus (the three are more or less in a straight line), suggestive of the dogs that led Isis to Anoubis (which better fits Ploutarkhos’s interpretation of the myth, though I think it’s a later version).

8 Aug 2025

Oh!

𓃣𓃪𓃧
woof woof woof woof woof woof

There are three canines in the Isis myth: Anoubis, the guard dog; Seth, the dangerous wild dog; Wepwawet, the tracker, the guide. These are the just same as the three heads of Kerberos, the guardian of Haides, and they represent, collectively, karma in it’s three functions: keeping the children safe, keeping the dead in, and showing the living the way back out.

Notice, too, how Anubis is depicted in hieroglyphs lying down; Seth, sitting; and Wepwawet standing; representing one growing more active as they develop...

9 Aug 2025: Sphinx’s Riddle

WAIT A SECOND

When Sphinx asked Oidipous, "What is that which has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed," he answered "man, for as a babe he is four-footed, going on four limbs; as an adult he is two-footed; and as an old man he gets besides a third support in a staff."

This is a myth, and so a mystery teaching; therefore, while Oidipous’s answer is "correct," it also hides the true answer, which is man’s greater life. The one voice is the soul, which reincarnates in many bodies; the four limbs is when the human soul is originally incarnated in beastly lives, living without virtue; the two limbs is when the human soul is as a "normal" human, living the civic virtues; and the three limbs is when the human soul is initiated (cf. Hesiodos receiving a laurel-wood staff from the Mousoi and Teiresias receiving a cornel-wood staff from Athene), living the purificatory virtues. Prior to that, the soul isn’t individuated (being a part of the undifferentiated group-soul); after that, it isn’t strictly human (or, indeed, strictly individual anymore).

9 Aug 2025

Hyginus, in his De Astronomia, tells us the myths associated with various constellations; in his discussion of the constellation Βοώτης Bootes "ox-driver," tells us the story of Ἰκάριος Ikarios. Evidently, Ikarios was just and pious and so Dionusos taught him how to grow grapes and make wine from them. Once he had mastered this, he loaded up his ox-cart with wine and went around giving wine to the shepherds of Attike. Becoming drunk, they supposed that he had given them poison, and so they killed him and buried his body under a tree. When he never came home, his daughter Ἠριγόνη Erigone "Becoming Spring" worried, and after Ikarios’s dog, Μαῖρα Maira "Sparkling," who had traveled with him, came home howling and whining, her worry turned to grief. The dog led her to his master’s body, and the poor girl hung herself on the tree under which he was buried, and the dog lied down and died with her. Dionusus, pitying the three unjust deaths, placed them among the stars as the constellations Bootes, Virgo "maiden," and the star Προκύων Prokuon "guide-dog" (woof woof).

This seems to me to be yet-another dim memory of the Osiris myth, with Ikarios being Osiris, Erigone being Isis, and Maira being the dogs who guided Isis to Anoubis (who, in turn, helped her find the pieces of Osiris), making it another argument in favor of my Wepwawet/Procyon theory.

I think it’s interesting that Erigone (=Isis) is the daughter of Ikarios (=Osiris), rather than his wife; this bears similarities to Kore (=Osiris) being the daughter of Demeter (=Isis) or Danae (=Isis) being the daughter of Akrisios (=Seth) and the illicit lover of Proitos (=Osiris). I guess the Egyptians had a high opinion of romantic love, while the Greeks had a high opinion of filial love.

17 Aug 2025

The sword of Orion opens the doors of the sky.
Before the doors close again the gate to the path
over the fire, beneath the holy ones as they grow dark
As a falcon flies as a falcon flies, may Unis rise into this fire
Beneath the holy ones as they grow dark.
They make a path for Unis, Unis takes the path,
Unis becomes the falcon star, Sirius. [...]

Though placed in the tomb, men fly away to them, the stars.
Sirius makes Unis fly to heaven among his brothers, the stars. [...]

The shining falcon is yours, Unis,
He does not give it to another rising to him.
Unis goes to the sky with you falcon shining. [...]

Unis himself is destroyed upon his ascent to heaven.
Wepwawet flies Unis to heaven among his brothers the stars.

(The Pyramid Texts, as translated by Susan Brind Morrow. Emphasis mine.)

Procyon (woof woof) precedes the heliacal rising of Sirius (woof woof) into the sky to shine brightest of the stars after being hidden below the horizon all winter.

Wepwawet (woof woof) leads the flayed Horos into Lower Egypt to rule his people after living in exile.

The White Goddess guides the shipless and naked Odusseus to land and home after being stranded abroad for twenty long years.

21 Aug 2025

Remember how Hesiodos and Teiresias were each given initiation presents by their initiators? I just realized that apparently Teiresias traded his staff of cornel-wood for one of gold when he left his mortal body behind:

ἦλθε δ’ ἐπὶ ψυχὴ Θηβαίου Τειρεσίαο
χρύσεον σκῆπτρον ἔχων, [...]

Then the soul of Teiresias of Thebai came to me,
holding a golden staff, [...]

(Odusseus speaking. Homeros, Odusseia XI 90–1.)

This made me wonder about other heroes’ god-given gifts, and what happened to them after their quests. Here’s a short list I made from memory, though I am interested to find others:

• Hermes and Athene gave Perseus a vorpal sword and mirror shield, which he returned after his quest.

• Athene gave Bellerophon a golden bridle to tame Pegasus, which went to Zeus after Bellerophon died.

• Athene gave Teiresias a cornel-wood staff, which he apparently traded for a golden one when his soul went to Haides.

• Hermes, Apollon, Hephaistos, Athene, and Athene again gave Herakles a sword, a bow and arrows, a breastplate, a dress, and a lock of Medousa’s hair in a bronze jar. The jar was given to Sterope, who used it to defend Tegea from the Argives; the bow was given to Philoktetes, who used it to kill Paris at Troia; of all the items, nothing further is said.

• Hephaistos gave Akhilleus a panoply, which became the property of Odusseus, and evidently ended up at the bottom of the sea (returning to Thetis, who asked Hephaistos for them?).

• The White Goddess gave Odusseus her veil, which he returned after swimming to the land of the Phaiakians.

• Menelaos and Helene gave Telemakhos a double-handled goblet, a gold-and-silver mixing bowl made by Hephaistos, and a finely-embroidered dress.

• The Muses gave Hesiodos a laurel staff, of which nothing further is said.

Because the quest is "immortality" (e.g. ascending to a greater-than-human life), each of these are representative of god-given capacities that an initiate is to master to complete the quest, after which they are returned since they are of no further use in the upper world. For example, of Perseus’s gifts, Hermes’s sword is discrimination and Athene’s shield is reflection, both essential tools of the initiate.

But there are exceptions, and I think they are worth consideration:

• All of the gifts are either returned to their owners or left behind for others to use in their own quests, except for Teiresias’s, which is perfected, and Telemakhos’s, which are kept for remembrance.

• Most of the gifts are strikingly coded hyper-masculine (arms, armor, phalluses), but a few are instead coded hyper-feminine (cups, veils, dresses).

23 Aug 2025

So, Tacitus says something odd about the Suebi, a Germanic tribe living in what is now Eastern Germany:

Some of the Suebi sacrifice also to Isis. I cannot determine the reason and origin of the foreign cult, but her emblem, fashioned in the form of a Liburnian ship, proves that her worship comes from abroad.

(Tacitus, Germania IX, as translated by J. B. Rives.)

Possibly this is simply interpretatio romana, and this is what most scholars seem to assume as a matter of course. But let’s suppose it isn’t? Diodoros claims, after all, that Leto (=Isis) and her children came to Greece from Hyperborea, so perhaps Isis really is from the north and it shouldn’t be surprising to see her in Germany?

But I realized something just now. I have said that the Isis myth is astrological, and is written in the constellations; we even see the various parts of the myth in the rising and setting of these constellations. But the ship of Isis, which we call Argo Navis, is too far south to be seen even from Greece. (I’ve lived on the same latitude as Cythera, and only the very, very tip of the nose of the ship is visible from there!) I suppose that this is why the Greeks, when they imported the Isis-Horos myth as Danae-Perseus, found new constellations for it in the northern sky.

But Germany is much further north even than that, and Hyperborea further still. So if the myth originated in the north, why are the constellations for it found in the south?

So while none of this is conclusive, it’s another datapoint in favor of, no, Leto being Egyptian after all.

26 Aug 2025

Okay, okay, while I think that names matter, they obviously don’t all matter... for example, here’s all of the animals in Homeros:

• Ξάνθος “Goldie,” one of Akhilleus’s two divine chariot-horses (who speaks!).

• Βαλίος “Spotty,” the other of Akhilleus’s two divine chariot-horses.

• Πήδασος “Jumper,” Akhilleus’s trace horse (mortal, but shockingly able to keep up with the divine ones).

• Ἀρείων “Better” (...than what!?), Adrastus’s warhorse.

• Πόδαργος “Quickfoot,” fastest of Menelaos’s chariot-horses.

• Αἴθη “Blaze,” fastest of Agamemnon’s chariot-horses.

• Ἄργος “Brighteyes,” Odusseus’s faithful hunting dog.

(I think it’s cute how the ancients named their pets just like we do!)

29 Aug 2025: To the Ecosophian Community

Hear the words of Athene:

ἀλλά μοι ἀμφ’ Ὀδυσῆι δαΐφρονι δαίεται ἦτορ,
δυσμόρῳ, ὃς δὴ δηθὰ φίλων ἄπο πήματα πάσχει
νήσῳ ἐν ἀμφιρύτῃ, ὅθι τ’ ὀμφαλός ἐστι θαλάσσης.
νῆσος δενδρήεσσα, θεὰ δ’ ἐν δώματα ναίει,
Ἄτλαντος θυγάτηρ ὀλοόφρονος, ὅς τε θαλάσσης
πάσης βένθεα οἶδεν, ἔχει δέ τε κίονας αὐτὸς
μακράς, αἳ γαῖάν τε καὶ οὐρανὸν ἀμφὶς ἔχουσιν.
τοῦ θυγάτηρ δύστηνον ὀδυρόμενον κατερύκει,
αἰεὶ δὲ μαλακοῖσι καὶ αἱμυλίοισι λόγοισιν
θέλγει, ὅπως Ἰθάκης ἐπιλήσεται: αὐτὰρ Ὀδυσσεύς,
ἱέμενος καὶ καπνὸν ἀποθρῴσκοντα νοῆσαι
ἧς γαίης, θανέειν ἱμείρεται. [...]

But my heart is torn for wise Odusseus, that hapless one, who far from his friends this long while suffers affliction in a seagirt isle, where is the navel of the sea, a woodland isle, and therein a goddess has her habitation, the daughter of the mischievous Atlas, who knows the depths of every sea, and himself upholds the tall pillars which keep earth and sky apart. His daughter it is that holds the hapless man in sorrow: and ever with soft and guileful tales she is wooing him to forgetfulness of Ithake. But Odusseus—yearning to see even the smoke leaping upwards from his own land—has a desire to die.

(Homeros, Odusseia I 45–59A, as translated by S. H. Butcher and A. Lang, with minor edits by yours truly.)

If you, Ecosophians, are content to wed Kalupso and so obtain immortality—no mean thing, to be sure!—then so be it! But please, do not begrudge those who sit on the shore, gaze longingly for a wisp of smoke, and wish for death; for Zeus Mekhaneus does not forget such and contrives a way home for them...

4 Sep 2025

So a cave [as a symbol of the generated and perceptible cosmos] might appropriately called "lovely" seen from the point of view of one who chances upon it and perceives in it the participation of the forms—and, on the contrary, it might be called "murky" seen from the point of view of one who sees more deeply into it and penetrates it by the use of mind. Thus, as far as its exterior is concerned, and viewed superficially, it is "lovely," but as far as its interior is concerned, and viewed in depth, "murky."

(Porphurios on the Cave of the Nymphs in the Odusseia, as translated by Robert Lamberton.)

Perhaps this is why I am unable to perceive beauty in the world? I have gone too far...

Incidentally, it is interesting that the Persians and Greeks used caves for their mysteries, while the Egyptians who presumably originated the practice used temples, elaborately painted with signs and symbols. I think the Egyptians were wiser in this, though of course I’ll grant that the resources required for the undertaking were much greater...

5 Sep 2025

Perhaps I’ve been overthinking it. Perhaps the whole reason why the ancients considered spirit to be male (cf. Osiris, Zeus) and matter to be female (cf. Isis, more-or-less every woman in Greek mythology) is that the soul "goes in" the body. (Indeed, Zeus’s great promiscuity is here a boon, as while the divine is unitary, there are many and diverse bodies that it "goes in.")

(The reason I have been overthinking this is probably because Plotinos rightly says somewhere that the soul "illuminates" the body as a beam of light illuminates motes of dust, rather than "inhabits" the body as if it were a vehicle. But the mysteries doubtless illustrated it otherwise; for example, Perseus wearing the "dogskin of Haides" to escape the Gorgons is the soul (re-)incarnating in beastlike bodies in order to escape dissolution.)

8 Sep 2025

Μὴ μεμψιμόρει μὴ θεοὺς μηδέν, ξένε·
ὥρην δὲ μέμφου, ᾗ πατὴρ ἔσπειρέ σε.

Find not fault in aught with the gods, stranger;
but find fault with the hour in which thy father sowed thee.

(An oracle of Serapis. Greek Anthology XIV #70, as translated by W. R. Paton.)

At first, I thought one’s birth chart was essentially "random." Five years ago or so, I heard Christopher Warnock say that one’s birth chart is their dharma, their job, and I thought this was wise. But today I realized that one’s natal chart is a riddle—in fact, it is the riddle of the Greater Mysteries that they are to solve.

14 Sep 2025

ἔνθ’ αὖτ’ ἄλλ’ ἐνόησ’ Ἑλένη Διὸς ἐκγεγαυῖα:
αὐτίκ’ ἄρ’ εἰς οἶνον βάλε φάρμακον, ἔνθεν ἔπινον,
νηπενθές τ’ ἄχολόν τε, κακῶν ἐπίληθον ἁπάντων.
ὃς τὸ καταβρόξειεν, ἐπὴν κρητῆρι μιγείη,
οὔ κεν ἐφημέριός γε βάλοι κατὰ δάκρυ παρειῶν,
οὐδ’ εἴ οἱ κατατεθναίη μήτηρ τε πατήρ τε,
οὐδ’ εἴ οἱ προπάροιθεν ἀδελφεὸν ἢ φίλον υἱὸν
χαλκῷ δηιόῳεν, ὁ δ’ ὀφθαλμοῖσιν ὁρῷτο.
τοῖα Διὸς θυγάτηρ ἔχε φάρμακα μητιόεντα,
ἐσθλά, τά οἱ Πολύδαμνα πόρεν, Θῶνος παράκοιτις
Αἰγυπτίη, τῇ πλεῖστα φέρει ζείδωρος ἄρουρα
φάρμακα, πολλὰ μὲν ἐσθλὰ μεμιγμένα πολλὰ δὲ λυγρά:
ἰητρὸς δὲ ἕκαστος ἐπιστάμενος περὶ πάντων
ἀνθρώπων: ἦ γὰρ Παιήονός εἰσι γενέθλης.

Then Helene, daughter of Zeus, turned to new thoughts:
presently she put a drug into the wine they were drinking,
a drug to lull all pain and anger, and bring forgetfulness of every sorrow.
Whoso should drink a draught thereof, when it is mingled in the bowl,
on that day he would let no tear fall down his cheeks,
not though his mother and his father died,
not though men slew his brother or dear son
with the sword before his face, and his own eyes beheld it.
Medicines of such virtue and so helpful had the daughter of Zeus,
which Poludamna,* the wife of Thon,* had given her, a woman
of Egypt, where earth the grain-giver yields herbs in greatest plenty,
many that are healing in the cup, and many baneful.
There each man is a healer skilled beyond all
human kind; yea, for they are of the race of Paieon.*

228. Poludamna: "many-overcoming."
228. Thon: perhaps from Thonis, a famed Egyptian port on Canopic mouth of the Nile, noting that Kanopos (=Anoubis) was Menelaos’s (=Isis’s) helmsman, who died near there (with a city being named for him there, hence the name of the stream of the Nile).
232. Paieon: in Homeros, the physician of the gods (cf. Iliad V 401, 899).

(Homeros, Odusseia 219–32, as translated by S. Butcher and A. Lang, with edits by yours truly.)

Ten measures of magical power descended into the world: Egypt took nine and the rest of the world took one.

(Talmud, Kiddushin 49b.)

Helene’s magical drug is the same as Dionusos’s wine: it is the mysteries themselves. By internalizing these, one becomes proof against the turbulence of life, realizing that it is a mere shadow-play of the light of the real world. But it is worth remembering that Egypt was a very mixed bag, having some of the highest mathematics and philosophy and some of the most debased superstition and witchcraft: one must be choosy in which parts of it they imbibe.

18 Sep 2025

My daughter asked me, this morning, if I knew about any “skimpians.”

I asked, “What’s a ‘skimpian?’”

She said, “A ‘skimping Olympian,’ you know, like somebody who cheats at the Olympics!”

I didn’t know, but whenever a question about ancient Greek culture comes up, the first person to check is Pausanias, who wrote a travelogue about all Greece. So I open it up, turn to the chapter about Olympia, and sure enough (V xxi §2):

As you go to the stadium along the road from the Metroum, there is on the left at the bottom of Mount Cronius a platform of stone, right by the very mountain, with steps through it. By the platform have been set up bronze images of Zeus which have been made from the fines forced on athletes who have wantonly broken the rules of the contests.

He goes on to list the people who cheated, my favorite of which is this one:

They say that Callippus of Athens, who had entered for the pentathlon, bought off his fellow-competitors by bribes. [...] The Athenians commissioned Hypereides to persuade the judges to waive the fine, but the judges refused, and the Athenians were upset enough to not pay the money and to boycott the Olympic games, until finally the god at Delphi declared that he would deliver no oracle on any matter to the Athenians before they had paid the fine.

(You know you must have fucked up if Apollon himself has to weigh in.) Pausanias also says that they had to write inscriptions on the statues, which remind me of Bart Simpson writing endlessly on a blackboard:

The first of the inscriptions is intended to make plain that an Olympic victory is to be won, not by money, but by swiftness of foot and strength of body.

I think all of that is honestly pretty funny.

25 Sep 2025: The Way Up

As soon as you see [Proteus] safe in his bed, that is the time for brawn and muscle: catch him fast and hold him, however he may struggle and fight. He will turn into all sorts of shapes to try you, into all the creatures that live and move upon the earth, into water, into blazing* fire; but you must hold him fast and press him all the harder. When he is himself, and questions you in the same shape that he was when you saw him in his bed—then no more violence, but let the Old Man go; and then, sir, ask which god it is who is angry, and how you shall make your way homewards over the fish-giving sea.

418. Blazing: θεσπι-δαὲς "god-kindled."

(Eidothea advising Menelaos. Homeros, Odusseia IV 414–24 as translated by W. H. D. Rouse.)

And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.

(Diotima of Mantineia teaching Sokrates. Platon, Sumposion 211C–D, as translated by Benjamin Jowett.)

Let us, then, make a mental picture of our universe: each member shall remain what it is, distinctly apart; yet all is to form, as far as possible, a complete unity so that whatever comes into view shall show as if it were the surface of the orb over all, bringing immediately with it the vision, on the one plane, of the sun and of all the stars with earth and sea and all living things as if exhibited upon a transparent globe. Bring this vision actually before your sight, so that there shall be in your mind the gleaming representation of a sphere, a picture holding sprung, themselves, of that universe and repose or some at rest, some in motion. Keep this sphere before you, and from it imagine another, a sphere stripped of magnitude and of spatial differences; cast out your inborn sense of Matter, taking care not merely to attenuate it: call on God, maker of the sphere whose image you now hold, and pray Him to enter. And may He come bringing His own Universe with all the Gods that dwell in it—He who is the one God and all the gods, where each is all, blending into a unity, distinct in powers but all one god in virtue of that one divine power of many facets.

(Plotinos, Enneads V viii "on the Intellectual Beauty," as translated by Stephen MacKenna. See also Enneads I vi "on Beauty.")

Ever notice how Eidothea (Εἰδο-θέη "the Goddess of Knowing") teaches Menelaos the exact same thing Diotima (Διο-τίμα "she honors God") teaches Sokrates or which Plotinos (Πλωτ-ῖνος "he swims?") teaches us? That is, to hold fast in meditation first the various forms of "all the creatures that live and move upon the earth," then walk those back the abstract forms of "water," then walk those back to the archtypal forms of "god-kindled fire," and finally walk those back to Proteus (Πρωτεύς "the first") itself? Do that and you can, like Menelaos, return home...

27 Sep 2025: Schisms

Kallimakhos wrote a poem concerning Puthagoras in which he says,

[...] οἱ δ’ ὑπήκουσαν
οὐ πάντες, ἀλλ’ οὓς εἶχεν οὕτερος δαίμων.

but not all listened to him:
only those with other daimons.

I’m not sure what to make of οὓς εἶχεν οὕτερος δαίμων "those having the other (of two) daimons" unless this is referring to something like shoulder angels, with the one guiding well and the other poorly. I’m not familiar with anything like that in the poets or the philosophers: Hesiodos, the Homeros of the Odusseia, and the Platonists all seem to assume that Zeus is universal and unconcerned with individuals, but allots each a δαίμων "distributor" to give them their individual share of Providence. (Perhaps it’s related to the Homeros of the Ilias speaking of Zeus’s two jars?) In any case, Mair translates it as "some misguided men."

If so, I think it’s funny that Kallimakhos is calling the Puthagoreans "misguided;" he himself teaches the Thebaian mystery religion, and Puthagoras only taught a very slightly different branch of the same tree; I’m not up on my church politics, but this seems something like a Presbyterian whining about Methodists.

1 Oct 2025: Owl Howlers

Looks like my angel isn’t the only one with a sense of humor:

Τηλέμαχ’, οὐκέτι καλὰ δόμων ἄπο τῆλ’ ἀλάλησαι,
κτήματά τε προλιπὼν ἄνδρας τ’ ἐν σοῖσι δόμοισιν
οὕτω ὑπερφιάλους: μή τοι κατὰ πάντα φάγωσι
κτήματα δασσάμενοι, σὺ δὲ τηϋσίην ὁδὸν ἔλθῃς.

Far-Fighter,* it’s no longer good to be a Far-Flighter* from home,
leaving those over-reaching men in your house with your wealth
like this, lest they divide and eat up* all your possessions,
and all your efforts be those of a Faff-Abouter.*

10. Far-Fighter: Τηλέ-μαχος Telemakhos "he fights from afar."
10. Far-Flighter: Τηλ-άλαλος Telalalos "he wanders far."
12. Eat up: amusingly, in Greek, this is κατὰ φάγωσι "eat down."
13. Faff-Abouter: Τηΰσιος Te’usios "idler."

(Athene teases Telemakhos with puns on his name. Homer, Odusseia XV 10–13.)

To be honest, the Odusseia is pretty goofy in Greek, with all its puns and dad-jokes. How classicists got the impression it was all serious, high-art, oral-history whatever is beyond me.

6 Oct 2025

Look what I found, describing us:

τὸ πολυπλανὲς καὶ μέχρι τοῦ Ταρτάρου κατιὸν καὶ αὖθις ἀνεγειρόμενον παντοῖά τε εἴδη ζωῆς ἀνελίττον ἤθεσί τε χρώμενον ποικίλοις καὶ πάθεσιν ἄλλοτε ἄλλοις καὶ μορφὰς ζῴων ἀλλαττόμενον πολυειδεῖς, δαιμονίας ἀνθρωπίνας ἀλόγους, κατευθυνόμενον δ’ οὖν ὅμως ὑπὸ τῆς Δίκης καὶ εἰς οὐρανὸν ἀπὸ γῆς ἀνατρέχον καὶ εἰς νοῦν ἀπὸ τῆς ὕλης περιαγόμενον κατὰ δή τινας τεταγμένας τῶν ὅλων περιόδους.

a far-wanderer, who descends all the way to Tartaros only to be raised up again, who unfolds all possible forms of life, making use of diverse manners and suffering one passion after another, who takes on the forms of living beings of every sort, daimons, men, and irrational creatures, and yet is guided by Justice, ascending from earth to heaven and from matter to intellect, being led round and round in accordance with certain prescribed revolutions of the universe.

(Proklos on the Timaios of Platon III §259, as translated by Simon Fortier, with minor edits by yours truly.)

Good: I have been and am on the right track.

6 Oct 2025

This article uses a tool to describe a strange behavior seen in LLMs; when asked to give a seahorse emoji, they:

1. Incorrectly guess "yes."

2. Assume that guess is true and try to satisfy it.

3. When that fails, instead of retrying [1], they instead repeatedly retry [2] until they give up.

This strikes me as the behavior of an asshole a brash and overconfident person, the kind who asks forgiveness rather than permission. Perhaps it's not evil per-se but it's certainly hubristic: a modest person wouldn't act like that.

I don't like that kind of person so it's no wonder I don't like LLMs.

Business executives adore that kind of person so it's no wonder they do.

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