From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Dec 22 2002 - 23:27:41 GMT
All moqers:
I've been pulling many of my favorite books off the shelf in pursuit the
Sophists and their world and have found some thoughts that seem to shed
light. Here I quote two of those books. One is mentioned in the final pages
of Lila; Joseph Campbell's MASKS OF GOD (MOG), in this case the third
volume, and the other is Peter Kingsley's ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY, MYSTERY AND
MAGIC: Empedocles and the Pythagorean Tradition (APMM). This second book
re-examines the Presocratics in some very interesting way. Its an academic
work that criticizes previous scholarship for doing what the Chairman did
that day in class, which is breeze right past the most central myths and
allegories in Plato's works as if they weren't even there. Further, this
book goes into detail as to who the Sophists really were. Check it out.
Kingsley:
"As is well known, during the century or more before Plato's time there was
an extremely close link between Pythagoreanism and the production of Orphic
literature; it was plainly an established tradition for early Pythagoreans
to attribute to Orpheus poems they wrote on gods and the cosmos, salvation
and the soul. ... What is more, Orphic literary production exhibited a
marked tendency to gravitate towards the mysteries of Demeter and
Persephone, and assume the role in relation to them of sacred narrative
texts - as clearly emerges in the case of the Elusinian mysteries. And here
we come back to the Phaedo myth..." APMM 115
DMB says:
Here we are just getting a sketch of the ideas floating around in Plato's
world. But I should add that the Pythagoreans are remembered in our time
mostly for the work they did with numbers, but it was actually a kind of
religion or cult and their thing was number mysticism. Orpheus was a kind of
figure head for maany of the mystery cluts and he was the main man among the
Pythogoreans. In other words, there was nothing secular about Plato's world.
In those days mathematics was a spiritual endevor, as was just about
everything.
Kingsley:
"Plato himself, as we have seen, knew and used a body of Orphic literature
which already in his days was considered ancient; and earlier in the Phaedo
he alludes to this literature in a way which prepare us for the fact that he
will be using Orphic sources in the cultimating myth. The Derveni papyrus is
vivd proof... " APMM 122
DMB says:
It easy to imagine that this ancient Orphic literature was, in Plato's time,
like the bible is today. And what Kingsley has done throughout the book is
show where the Orphic poems, myths and allegories appear in Plato's works.
There is more than just a connection between mystical Orphism and Plato's
work. The author even devotes an entire chapter to them. And he provides new
insights on them based on a relatively recent archeological discovery.
Kingsley:
"In highly vivid and critical terms the author of the papyrus (the Derveni
papyrus re-discovered in 1962)attacks wandering Orphic priests - the details
of the description show that these priests are indistinguishable from the
ones mocked at by Plato in the REPUBLIC - for going about their business and
earning money performing their ritual without being able to explain either
to
themselves, or to anyone else, what they are really doing." ANCIENT
PHILOSOPHY, MYSTERY AND MAGIC Page 164-5
DMB says:
Cha CHING! The Sophists were Orphic priests! As a passionate student of
Orpheus, I'm here to tell you that this insight is HUGE! To borrow a phrase,
it "produces and avalanche of information" as to what the Sophists were all
about. I'll next turn to Campbell for more details about that, but notice
another thing first. Why do Plato and the author of the Derveni papyrus
attack these priests? Because they preform the rituals, but can't say what
they mean. Plato contrasts this with Socrates, who does not take money and
can say what they mean. He's the good kind of Sophist and not to be
associated with those decadent charlatans. Kingsley suppliments the picture
of this period quite well, I think. He shows that Plato was up to his neck
in Orphic myths and Orphism. His dialogues contain, comment on and refer to
this mystical background. More about that from Campbell....
"The name Orpheus itself belongs to the oldest level of Greek names; those
ending in -eus. Such are pre-Homeric. Early representations show him
singing, drawing animals to him by the power of his song; also as a fesitval
singer whose listeners - significantly - are men. The basic idea is of an
initiator whose power transforms even the wildest creatures, animals and men
who live the wilderness. Such a figure would have been associated with the
initiation of young men - in the wilds of nature, excluding women. There
something significant was disclosed to them in music and song that delivered
them from their blood-spilling savagery and gave a deep sense to the
ceremonies of transition from immaturity to adulthood. And the announcer of
this mystery played the lyre but was not a mere singer." MOG 184-5
DMB says:
These early representations take us way back in time. We can almost see a
transition from animal to human in the way Orpheus tames both men and beast,
the way it sought to transcend blood-spilling savagery and the initiation of
young men into adult society. He is said to have put an end to animal
sacrifice and is in fact the original vegan. The term comes from the name of
a star, Vega, which is in the constellation where the gods put his soul for
eternity. And you thought vegans were invented in Berkeley during the 60's.
Ha! I should add that this lyre playing aspect is not as trite as it might
seem. Orpheus sang the geneologies of the gods, of the history and fate of
the cosmos and stuff like that. You won't hear Brittany Spears or Celine
Dion covering those tunes any time soon. I include the quote as background
on Orphism, but notice the part about young men being initiated again. And
then recall that Socrates was charged with corrupting the young.
Hmmm.
"Later on, in the period of Greek urban life, detached from the earlier
ground of the tribal-bound secret men's rites, the so-called 'initiating
priests of Orpheus' revised their spiritual arts to the new spiritual needs.
And their modes of presentation now were divided into a lower, largely
ritualistic category, and a higher, purely spiritual, philosophical one,
where the initiators were, indeed, philosophers; first the Pythagoreans, but
then others also; Empedocles and onward to our dear and well-known Platonic
Banqueteers." MOG P185
DMB says:
As this ancient tribal ritual moved into the cities, these priests divided
into two kinds. Surely Plato and the papyrus author are condeming those
lower ritualistic kind in favor of the philosophical variety. (Platonic
Banqueteers indeed. Kingsley uses hyperbolic humor to refer to one of
Plato's get togethers as the greatest dinner party in the history of the
world, or some such boast. But I digress.) It seems we can see the beginning
of the split between mythos and logos. The rituals and myths don't need to
be understood or explained in intellectual terms for them to "work". They
did so for a long time before intellect ever came along. And yet the ability
to ALSO understand and explain the meaning of the rites and rituals,
especially on the part of priests, seems like an improvement over those who
can't. And it seems to me that the difference isn't just a matter of levels,
but also the priests ability to see the DQ that these rituals portray.
Here's some more details about the philosophical variety...
"In the teaching of Pythagoras the philosophic quest for the first cause and
principle of all things was carried to a consideration of the problem of the
magic of the Orphic lyre itself, by which the hearts of men are quelled,
purified, and restored to their part in God. His conclusion was that the
first principle is number, which is audible in music, and by a principle of
resonance touches - and thereby adjusts - the tuning of the soul. This idea
is fundamental to the arts of both India and the Far East and may go back to
the age of the Pyramids. However, as far as we know, it was Pythagoras who
first rendered it systematically as a principle by which art, psychology,
philosophy, ritual, mathematics and even athletics were to recognized as
aspects of a single science of harmony." MOG 185
DMB says:
Let heaven and nature sing. Adjust your soul! Get your soul in tune with the
universe! Wow. I'd like to hear that song. Clearly this picture expresses a
kind of cosmic unity, not only in the attempt to render a science of
harmony, but the more mythical ideas that connect nature and the heavens to
the feelings in your heart, that make the initiate feel at home in the
cosmos. Notice also how it reflects what Pirsig calls "the oldest idea known
to man"; that the physical order of the universe is also the moral order of
the universe. The various cosmologist differed widely, but they were each
trying to render a total picture and a first principle, they were trying to
express the ONE. I strongly suspect that this same idea was expressed in the
rituals of the Orphic priests and this is what some of them could not
explain or understand. This difference points at the sense in which the
social and intellectual levels are discreet. And yet the intellectual
descriptions relyed heavily on Orphic myths, just as Plato's work does. They
were not rejecting the myths, they were explaining their meaning. I also
suspect that they were not trying to create a new level so much as breathe
life into some ancient wisdom, the meaning of which was being lost or sold
for cash by those "decadent" Orphic priests, who were indistinguishable from
the Sophists criticized by Plato. These mystery based monisms were an
attempts to share the open secrets, attempts to get specific about the unity
of the universe revealed in a mystical experience. But then, as we all know,
something happened. Now we'll return to THE MASKS OF GOD to look at the day
the music died....
"...the numerous mystery cults flourished with increasing influence until,
in the late Roman period, first Mithraism, then Christianity, gained
imperial support and, thereby, the field.
For not all of us are philosophers. Many require an atmosphere of incense,
music, vestments and procession, gongs, bells, dramatic mimes and cries, to
be carried beyond themselves. And for such the various styles of religion
exist - where, for the most part, however, truth is so enveloped in symbol
as to be imperceptible to anyone who is not already a philosopher. Degrees
of
initation have been developed, through which the mind is meant to be carried
beyond the fields of the symbols to increasingly exalted realizations -
passsing, as it were, through veil beyond veil. But the ultimate
realizations differ, according, on one hand, to those cults in which
divinity is seen as at once immanent and transcendent, and on the other to
the orthodoz Zoroastrian, Jewish, Christian, and Mohammedan liturgies, where
the ontological distinction is retained between God and Man, Creator and
Creature." MOG P254
DMB says:
Not all of us are philosphers. The similarity between this quote and
Pirsig's comments on "ritualistic religions" is obvious. And it seems to me
that we can see SOM's mother in the litergical distinctions between creator
and creature. By contrast, he mystery cults and the subsequent mystical
philosophers believed that these dicotomies and dualities were illusory and
sought the ONE. But that flame was extinguished by the Holy Roman Empire,
which was much more Roman than Holy. This kind of religion looses its
transparency to the divine, becomes a social institution rather that a
spiritual one. And its no accident that this Empire rose as the ancients
were lost and forgotten, when Europe reverted back to what it was before the
classical civilization and entered a dark age. The following also sheds a
lot of light on Sam's comparison between the Socratic way and the Christian
way...
"In cults of the former type the two strengths, "outside" and "within" are
finally to be recognized as identical. The saviour worshipped as without,
though indeed without, is at the same time one's self. 'All things are
Buddha things'. Whereas in the great Near Eastern orthodoxies no such
identity can be imagined or even credited as conceivable. The aim is not to
come to a realization of one's self, here and now, as of one mystery with
the Being of beings, but to know, love, and serve in this world a God who is
apart (mythic dissociation) though close at hand (omnipresent), and to be
happy with him when time shall have ceased and eternity been attained. The
referent (the 'God') of cults of the first type is never a personage
somewhere else, to be known, loved, served, and someday beheld (which, in
fact, is the notion to be dispelled), but a state of realization to be
attained by way of the initiatory, knowledge-releasing imagery of the 'God',
as through a sign. The function of such signs is to effect a psychological
change of immediate value in itself, while that of the orthodox mythology is
to fix the mind and will upon a state of soul to come." MOG P255
DMB says:
This is what was lost. The realization of one's self as one with the mystery
of all Being. That's how Quality got lost. Its about the soul-lessness of
things, not just intellectual things, but any blind and dead and static
thing. The notion to be dispelled by this psychological had taken the field
before the ancients had been re-discovered and the whole enlightenment
project started over again. And the MOQ is a reassertion of this ancient
mystical idea, an intellectual description of a mystic reality. And that's
not so different than what philosophical mystics have always done.
As I understand the story, the oracle at Delphi pronounced Socrates the most
wise of all. When asked why he should be considered the wisest when so many
wise men claim to know the One and he claimed not to know it, he answered
that he was wiser for knowing that his understanding was only intellectual,
but unlike those other wise men Socrates knew that such was not a true
knowledge. Like Pirsig, he knew there was only so far the intellect could go
and that mystical reality was beyong that point.
Apologies for the length, Thanks tons for reading,
DMB
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