(386) ‘Lest the mansions grim and squalid which the gods abhor should be seen both of mortals and immortals 2 .’ And again:— ‘O heavens! verily in the house of Hades there is soul and ghostly form but no mind at all 3 !’ Again of Tiresias:— ‘[To him even after death did Persephone grant mind,] that he alone should be wise; but the other souls are flitting shades 4 .’ Again:— ‘The soul flying from the limbs had gone to Hades, lamenting her fate, leaving manhood and youth 5 .’ Again:— ‘And the soul, with shrilling cry, passed like smoke beneath the earth 6 .’ And,— ‘As bats in hollow of mystic cavern, whenever any of them has dropped out of the string and falls from the rock, fly shrilling and cling to one another, so did they with shrilling cry hold together as they moved 7 .’ And we must beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we strike out these and similar passages, not because they are unpoetical, or unattractive to the popular ear, but because the greater the poetical charm of them, the less are they meet for the ears of boys and men who are meant to be free, and who should fear slavery more than death. Undoubtedly. Also we shall have to reject all the terrible and appalling names which describe the world below—Cocytus and Styx,

(50) Servius, commenting on Virgil's Æneid, observes that "the wise Egyptians took care to embalm their bodies, and deposit them in catacombs, in order that the soul might be preserved for a long time in connection with the body, and might not soon be alienated; while the Romans, with an opposite design, committed the remains of their dead to the funeral pile, intending that the vital spark might immediately be restored to the general element, or return to its pristine nature." (From Prichard's An Analysis of the Egyptian Mythology.)

(7) The soul of man--often called Psyche, and in the Eleusinian Mysteries symbolized by Persephone--is essentially a spiritual thing. Its true home is in the higher worlds, where, free from the bondage of material form and material concepts, it is said to be truly alive and self-expressive. The human, or physical, nature of man, according to this doctrine, is a tomb, a quagmire, a false and impermanent thing, the source of all sorrow and suffering. Plato describes the body as the sepulcher of the soul; and by this he means not only the human form but also the human nature.

(37) The two following extracts are from Clemens Alexandrinus in Stromat. lib. 3. p. 413.

The ancient theologists and priests testify that the soul is conjoined to the body through a certain punishment, and that it is buried in this body as in a sepulchre. Philolaus.

Whatever we see when awake is death; and when asleep, a dream. Pythagoras.

(24) Even though thou couldst enter thy dead body nine times over — owing to the long interval which thou hast passed in the Chonyid Bardo — it will have been frozen if in winter, been decomposed if in summer, or, otherwise, thy relatives will have cremated it, or interred it, or thrown it into the water, or given it to the birds and beasts of pray. Wherefore finding no place for thyself to enter into, thou wilt be dissatisfied and have the sensation of being squeezed into cracks and crevices amidst rocks and boulders. The experiencing of this sort of misery occurs in the Intermediate State when seeking rebirth. Even though thou seekest a body, thou wilt gain nothing but trouble. Put aside the desire for a body; and permit thy mind to abide in the state of resignation, and act so as to abide therein.

(51) No complete records are available which give the secret doctrine of the Egyptians concerning the relationship existing between the spirit, or consciousness, and the body which it inhabited. It is reasonably certain, however, that Pythagoras, who had been initiated in the Egyptian temples, when he promulgated the doctrine of metempsychosis, restated, in part at least, the teachings of the Egyptian initiates. The popular supposition that the Egyptians mummified their dead in order to preserve the form for a physical resurrection is untenable in the light of modern knowledge regarding their philosophy of death. In the fourth book of On Abstinence from Animal Food, Porphyry describes an Egyptian custom of purifying the dead by removing the contents of the abdominal cavity, which they placed in a separate chest. He then reproduces the following oration which had been translated out of the Egyptian tongue by Euphantus: "O sovereign Sun, and all ye Gods who impart life to men, receive me, and deliver me to the eternal Gods as a cohabitant. For I have always piously worshipped those divinities which were pointed out to me by my parents as long as I lived in this age, and have likewise always honored those who procreated my body. And, with respect to other men, I have never slain any one, nor defrauded any one of what he deposited with me, nor have I committed any other atrocious deed. If, therefore, during my life I have acted erroneously, by eating or drinking things which it is unlawful to cat or drink, I have not erred through myself, but through these" (pointing to the chest which contained the viscera). The removal of the organs identified as the seat of the appetites was considered equivalent to the purification of the body from their evil influences.

(20) What is the so great fault, said I, the ignorant commit, that they should be deprived of deathlessness? Thou seem'st, He said, O thou, not to have given heed to what thou heardest. Did I not bid thee think? Yea do I think, and I remember, and therefore give Thee thanks. If thou didst think [thereon], [said He], tell me: Why do they merit death who are in Death? It is because the gloomy Darkness is the root and base of the material frame; from it came the Moist Nature; from this the body in the sense-world was composed; and from this [body] Death doth the Water drain.

(614) These, then, are the prizes and rewards and gifts which are bestowed upon the just by gods and men in this present life, in addition to the other good things which justice of herself provides. Yes, he said; and they are fair and lasting. And yet, I said, all these are as nothing either in number or greatness in comparison with those other recompenses which await both just and unjust after death. And you ought to hear them, and then both just and unjust will have received from us a full payment of the debt which the argument owes to them. Speak, he said; there are few things which I would more gladly hear. Well, I said, I will tell you a tale; not one of the tales which Odysseus tells to the hero Alcinous, yet this too is a tale of a hero, Er the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by birth. He was slain in battle, and ten days afterwards, when the bodies of the dead were taken up already in a state of corruption, his body was found unaffected by decay, and carried away home to be buried. And on the twelfth day, as he was lying on the funeral pile, he returned to life and told them what he had seen in the other world. He said that when his soul left the body he went on a journey with a great company, and that they came to a mysterious place at which there were two openings in the earth; they were near together, and over against them were two other openings in the heaven above. In the intermediate space there were judges seated, who commanded the just, after they had given judgment on them and had bound their sentences in front of them, to ascend by the heavenly way on the right hand; and in like manner the unjust were bidden by them to descend by the lower way on the left hand; these also bore the symbols of their deeds, but fastened on their backs. He drew near,

(28) Saviors unnumbered have died for the sins of man and by the hands of man, and through their deaths have interceded in heaven for the souls of their executioners. The martyrdom of the God-Man and the redemption of the world through His blood has been an essential tenet of many great religions. Nearly all these stories can be traced to sun worship, for the glorious orb of day is the Savior who dies annually for every creature within his universe, but year after year rises again victorious from the tomb of winter. Without doubt the doctrine of the crucifixion is based upon the secret traditions of the Ancient Wisdom; it is a constant reminder that the divine nature of man is perpetually crucified upon the animal organism. Certain of the pagan Mysteries included in the ceremony of initiation the crucifixion of the candidate upon a cross, or the laying of his body upon a cruciform altar. It has been claimed that Apollonius of Tyana (the Antichrist) was initiated into the Arcanum of Egypt in the Great Pyramid, where he hung upon a cross until unconscious and was then laid in the tomb (the coffer) for three days. While his body was unconscious, his soul was thought to pass into the realms of the immortals (the place of death) After it had vanquished death (by recognizing that life is eternal) it returned again to the body, which then rose from the coffer, after which he was hailed as a brother by the priests, who believed that he had returned from the land of the dead. This concept was, in substance, the teaching of the Mysteries.

(6) After his soul has departed he dies, and when it has gone down he decays; he is all corruption; all his bones are rottenness, putrefaction seizes his limbs and makes his bones break down, his flesh becomes a fetid liquid, his breath is stink, he becomes a multitude of worms

(53) In his work on Egyptian Magic, S.S.D.D. hazards the following speculation concerning the esoteric purposes behind the practice of mummification. "There is every reason to suppose," he says, "that only those who had received some grade of initiation were mummified; for it is certain that, in the eyes of the Egyptians, mummification effectually prevented reincarnation. Reincarnation was necessary to imperfect souls, to those who had failed to pass the tests of initiation; but for those who had the Will and the capacity to enter the Secret Adytum, there was seldom necessity for that liberation of the soul which is said to be effected by the destruction of the body. The body of the Initiate was therefore preserved after death as a species of Talisman or material basis for the manifestation of the Soul upon earth."

(2) But [all of this] doth seem to some beyond belief; a tale to others; to others [yet again], perchance, a subject for their mirth. For in this life in body, it is a pleasant thing—the pleasure that one gets from one’s possessions. ’Tis for this cause that spite, in envy of its [hope of] immortality, doth clap the soul in prison, as they say, and keep it down, so that it stays in that part of itself in which it’s mortal, nor suffers it to know the part of its divinity.

(3) But if life is a good, is there good for all that lives?

No: in the vile, life limps: it is like the eye to the dim-sighted; it fails of its task.

But if the mingled strand of life is to us, though entwined with evil, still in the total a good, must not death be an evil?

Evil to What? There must be a subject for the evil: but if the possible subject is no longer among beings, or, still among beings, is devoid of life... why, a stone is not more immune.

If, on the contrary, after death life and soul continue, then death will be no evil but a good; Soul, disembodied, is the freer to ply its own Act.

If it be taken into the All-Soul- what evil can reach it There? And as the Gods are possessed of Good and untouched by evil- so, certainly is the Soul that has preserved its essential character. And if it should lose its purity, the evil it experiences is not in its death but in its life. Suppose it to be under punishment in the lower world, even there the evil thing is its life and not its death; the misfortune is still life, a life of a definite character.

Life is a partnership of a Soul and body; death is the dissolution; in either life or death, then, the Soul will feel itself at home.

But, again, if life is good, how can death be anything but evil?

Remember that the good of life, where it has any good at all, is not due to anything in the partnership but to the repelling of evil by virtue; death, then, must be the greater good.

In a word, life in the body is of itself an evil but the Soul enters its Good through Virtue, not living the life of the Couplement but holding itself apart, even here.

(620) was in most cases based on their experience of a previous life. There he saw the soul which had once been Orpheus choosing the life of a swan out of enmity to the race of women, hating to be born of a woman because they had been his murderers; he beheld also the soul of Thamyras choosing the life of a nightingale; birds, on the other hand, like the swan and other musicians, wanting to be men. The soul which obtained the twentieth 9 lot chose the life of a lion, and this was the soul of Ajax the son of Telamon, who would not be a man, remembering the injustice which was done him in the judgment about the arms. The next was Agamemnon, who took the life of an eagle, because, like Ajax, he hated human nature by reason of his sufferings. About the middle came the lot of Atalanta; she, seeing the great fame of an athlete, was unable to resist the temptation: and after her there followed the soul of Epeus the son of Panopeus passing into the nature of a woman cunning in the arts; and far away among the last who chose, the soul of the jester Thersites was putting on the form of a monkey. There came also the soul of Odysseus having yet to make a choice, and his lot happened to be the last of them all. Now the recollection of former toils had disenchanted him of ambition, and he went about for a considerable time in search of the life of a private man who had no cares; he had some difficulty in finding this, which was lying about and had been neglected by everybody else;

(1) Now onward goes, along a narrow path Between the torments and the city wall, My Master, and I follow at his back. "O power supreme, that through these impious circles Turnest me," I began, "as pleases thee, Speak to me, and my longings satisfy; The people who are lying in these tombs, Might they be seen? already are uplifted The covers all, and no one keepeth guard." And he to me: "They all will be closed up When from Jehoshaphat they shall return Here with the bodies they have left above. Their cemetery have upon this side With Epicurus all his followers, Who with the body mortal make the soul; But in the question thou dost put to me, Within here shalt thou soon be satisfied, And likewise in the wish thou keepest silent." And I: "Good Leader, I but keep concealed From thee my heart, that I may speak the less, Nor only now hast thou thereto disposed me." "O Tuscan, thou who through the city of fire Goest alive, thus speaking modestly, Be pleased to stay thy footsteps in this place.

(1) Many also of the political actions of his followers are [deservedly] praised. For it is reported that the Crotonians being once impelled to make sumptuous funerals and interments, some one of them said to the people, that he had heard Pythagoras when he was discoursing about divine natures observe, that the Olympian Gods attended to the dispositions of those that sacrificed, and not to the multitude of the sacrifices; but that, on the contrary, the terrestrial Gods, as being allotted the government of things less important, rejoiced in banquets and lamentations, and farther still, in continual libations, in delicacies, and in celebrating funerals with great expense. Whence, on account of his wish to receive, Pluto is called Hades. He suffers, therefore, those that slenderly honor him to remain for a longer time in the upper world; but he always draws down some one of those who are disposed to spend profusely in funeral solemnities, in order that he may obtain the honors which take place in commemoration of the dead.

In consequence of this advice, the Crotonians that heard it were of opinion, that if they conducted themselves moderately in misfortunes, they would preserve their own salvation; but that if they were immoderate in their expenses, they would all of them die prematurely. A certain person also having been made an arbitrator in an affair in which there was no witness, led each of the litigants to a certain monument, and said to one of them, the man who is buried in this monument was transcendently equitable; in consequence of which the other litigant prayed that the dead man might obtain much good; but the former said that the defunct was not at all better for the prayers of his opponent.

Pythagoras, therefore, condemned what the former litigant said, but asserted that he who praised the dead man for his worth, had done that which would be of no small importance in his claim to belief. At another time, in a cause of great moment, he decided that one of the two who had agreed to settle the affair by arbitration, should pay four talents, but that the other should receive two. Afterwards, he condemned the defendant to pay three talents; and thus he appeared to have given a talent to each of them. Two persons also had fraudulently deposited a garment with a woman who belonged to a court of justice, and told her she was not to give it to either of them unless both were present.

Some time after, for the purpose of circumvention, one of them received the common deposit, and said that it was with the consent of the other. But the other, who had not been present [when the garment was returned], acted the part of a sycophant, and related the compact that was made at the beginning, to the magistrates. A certain Pythagorean, however, taking up the affair said, that the woman had acted conformably to the compact, as both parties had been present. Two other persons also appeared to have a strong friendship for each other, but had fallen into a silent suspicion through a flatterer of one of them, who told him that his wife had been corrupted by the other.

It so happened however, that a Pythagorean came into a brazier’s shop, where he who conceived himself to be injured, was showing to the artist a sword which he had given him to sharpen, and was indignant with him because it was not sufficiently sharp. The Pythagorean, therefore, suspecting that the sword was intended to be used against him who was accused of adultery, said, This sword is sharper than all things except calumny. This being said, caused the man to consider with himself [what it was he intended to do], and not rashly to sin against his friend who was within, and who had been previously called [by him in order that he might kill him]. A zone also that had golden ornaments having fallen [at the feet] of a certain stranger in the temple of Esculapius, and the laws forbidding any one to take up that which had fallen on the ground, a Pythagorean advised the stranger, who was indignant at this prohibition, to take away the golden ornaments which had not fallen to the ground, but to leave the zone, because this was on the ground.

That circumstance, likewise, which by the ignorant is transferred to other places, is said to have happened in Crotona, viz. that during a public spectacle, some cranes flew over the theatre, and one of those who had sailed into the port, said to the person who sat near him, Do you see the witnesses? which being heard by a certain Pythagorean, he brought them into the court, consisting of a thousand magistrates, where being examined, it was found that they had thrown certain boys into the sea, and that they called the cranes who flew over the ship [at the time,] witnesses of the deed. When likewise certain persons who had recently become disciples of Pythagoras were at variance with each other, he who was the junior of the two came to the other and said to him, that there was no occasion to refer the affair to a third person, but that it rested with them to commit their anger to oblivion.

He, therefore, to whom these words were addressed, replied that he was very much pleased in other respects with what had been said, but that he was ashamed that, being the elder, he had not first said the same thing to the other [who was the junior]. We might here also narrate what is said of Phinthias and Damon, of Plato and Archytas, and likewise of Clinias and Prorus. Omitting, however, these [for the present], we shall mention what is related of Eubulus the Messenian, who when he was sailing homeward, and was taken captive by the Tyrrhenians, was recognized by Nausitheus a Tyrrhenian and also a Pythagorean, because he was one of the disciples of Pythagoras, and was taken by him from the pirates, and brought with great safety to Messena.

When the Carthaginians, also, were about to send more than five thousand soldiers into a desert island, Miltiades the Carthaginian, perceiving among them the Argive Possiden (both of them being Pythagoreans), went to him, and not manifesting what he intended to do, advised him to return to his native country, with all possible celerity, and having placed him in a ship that was then sailing near the shore, supplied him with what was necessary for his voyage, and thus saved the man from the dangers [to which he was exposed]. In short, he who should relate all that has taken place among the Pythagoreans in their associations with each other, would by the length of his narration exceed the proper quantity and the occasion of his treatise.

(3) The Egyptians, like many other ancient nations, held the doctrine of the preexistence of souls. They held it not like philosophers or poets, but as an article of their popular and traditional creed

(37) Orpheus wandered the earth for a while disconsolate, and there are several conflicting accounts of the manner of his death. Some declare that he was slain by a bolt of lightning; others, that failing to save his beloved Eurydice, he committed suicide. The generally accepted version of his death, however, is that he was torn to pieces by Ciconian women whose advances he had spurned. In the tenth book of Plato's Republic it is declared that, because of his sad fate at the hands of women, the soul that had once been Orpheus, upon being destined to live again in the physical world, chose rather to return in the body of a swan than be born of woman. The head of Orpheus, after being torn from his body, was cast with his lyre into the river Hebrus, down which it floated to the sea, where, wedging in a cleft in a rock, it gave oracles for many years. The lyre, after being stolen from its shrine and working the destruction of the thief, was picked up by the gods and fashioned into a constellation.

(43) For the dead or mortal flesh has encompassed the astral birth, and man's flesh is a dead carcass, while it is yet in the mother's body or womb, and is encompassed with hell and God's wrath.

(6) All of their coverings uplifted were, And from them issued forth such dire laments, Sooth seemed they of the wretched and tormented. And I: "My Master, what are all those people Who, having sepulture within those tombs, Make themselves audible by doleful sighs?" And he to me: "Here are the Heresiarchs, With their disciples of all sects, and much More than thou thinkest laden are the tombs. Here like together with its like is buried; And more and less the monuments are heated." And when he to the right had turned, we passed Between the torments and high parapets.