PLUTO, magnanimous, whose realms profound Are fix'd beneath the firm and solid ground, In the Tartarian plains remote from fight, And wrapt forever in the depths of night; Terrestrial Jove, thy sacred ear incline, And, pleas'd, accept thy mystic's hymn divine. Earth's keys to thee, illustrious king belong, 7 Its secret gates unlocking, deep and strong. 'Tis thine, abundant annual fruits to bear, For needy mortals are thy constant care. To thee, great king, Avernus is assign'd, The seat of Gods, and basis of mankind. Thy throne is fix'd in Hade's dismal plains, Distant, unknown to rest, where darkness reigns; Where, destitute of breath, pale spectres dwell, In endless, dire, inexorable hell; And in dread Acheron, whose depths obscure, Earth's stable roots eternally secure. O mighty dæmon, whose decision dread, The future fate determines of the dead, With captive Proserpine, thro' grassy plains, Drawn in a four-yok'd car with loosen'd reins, Rapt o'er the deep, impell'd by love, you flew 'Till Eleusina's city rose to view; There, in a wond'rous cave obscure and deep, The sacred maid secure from search you keep, The cave of Atthis, whose wide gates display An entrance to the kingdoms void of day. Of unapparent works, thou art alone The dispensator, visible and known. O pow'r all-ruling, holy, honor'd light, Thee sacred poets and their hymns delight: Propitious to thy mystic's works incline, Rejoicing come, for holy rites are thine.

(14) Again, that the Spring is called "flowery," from its nature; and Night "still," on account of rest; and the Moon" Gorgonian," on account of the face in it; and that the time in which it is necessary to sow is called Aphrodite by the "Theologian." In the same way, too, the Pythagoreans figuratively called the planets the "dogs of Persephone;" and to the sea they applied the metaphorical appellation of "the tears of Kronus." Myriads on myriads of enigmatical utterances by both poets and philosophers are to be found; and there are also whole books which present the mind of the writer veiled, as that of Heraclitus On Nature, who on this very account is called "Obscure." Similar to this book is the Theology of Pherecydes of Syrup; for Euphorion the poet, and the Causes of Callimachus, and the Alexandra of Lycophron, and the like, are proposed as an exercise in exposition to all the grammarians.

DAUGHTER of Jove, almighty and divine, Come, blessed queen, and to these rites incline: Only-begotten, Pluto's honor'd wife, 3 O venerable Goddess, source of life: 'Tis thine in earth's profundities to dwell, Fast by the wide and dismal gates of hell: Jove's holy offspring, of a beauteous mien, Fatal, with lovely locks, infernal queen: Source of the furies, whose blest frame proceeds From Jove's ineffable and secret seeds: Mother of Bacchus, Sonorous, divine, And many-form'd, the parent of the vine: The dancing Hours attend thee, essence bright, All-ruling virgin, bearing heav'nly light: Illustrious, horned, of a bounteous mind, 13 Alone desir'd by those of mortal kind. O, vernal queen, whom grassy plains delight, Sweet to the smell, and pleasing to the sight: Whose holy form in budding fruits we view, Earth's vig'rous offspring of a various hue: Espous'd in Autumn: life and death alone 21 To wretched mortals from thy power is known: For thine the task according to thy will, 23 Life to produce, and all that lives to kill. Hear, blessed Goddess, send a rich increase Of various fruits from earth, with lovely Peace; Send Health with gentle hand, and crown my life With blest abundance, free from noisy strife; Last in extreme old age the prey of Death, Dismiss we willing to the realms beneath, To thy fair palace, and the blissful plains Where happy spirits dwell, and Pluto reigns.

(3) Thou makest me remember where and what Proserpina that moment was when lost Her mother her, and she herself the Spring." As turns herself, with feet together pressed And to the ground, a lady who is dancing, And hardly puts one foot before the other, On the vermilion and the yellow flowerets She turned towards me, not in other wise Than maiden who her modest eyes casts down; And my entreaties made to be content, So near approaching, that the dulcet sound Came unto me together with its meaning As soon as she was where the grasses are. Bathed by the waters of the beauteous river, To lift her eyes she granted me the boon. I do not think there shone so great a light Under the lids of Venus, when transfixed By her own son, beyond his usual custom! Erect upon the other bank she smiled, Bearing full many colours in her hands, Which that high land produces without seed. Apart three paces did the river make us; But Hellespont, where Xerxes passed across, (A curb still to all human arrogance,)

(27) If the earth transmits the generative soul to growing things- or retains it while allowing a vestige of it to constitute the vegetal principle in them- at once the earth is ensouled, as our flesh is, and any generative power possessed by the plant world is of its bestowing: this phase of the soul is immanent in the body of the growing thing, and transmits to it that better element by which it differs from the broken off part no longer a thing of growth but a mere lump of material.

But does the entire body of the earth similarly receive anything from the soul?

Yes: for we must recognize that earthly material broken off from the main body differs from the same remaining continuously attached; thus stones increase as long as they are embedded, and, from the moment they are separated, stop at the size attained.

We must conclude, then, that every part and member of the earth carries its vestige of this principle of growth, an under-phase of that entire principle which belongs not to this or that member but to the earth as a whole: next in order is the nature , concerned with sensation, this not interfused but in contact from above: then the higher soul and the Intellectual-Principle, constituting together the being known as Hestia and Demeter - a nomenclature indicating the human intuition of these truths, asserted in the attribution of a divine name and nature.

(8) But what are we to understand by this Zeus with the garden into which, we are told, Poros or Wealth entered? And what is the garden?

We have seen that the Aphrodite of the Myth is the Soul and that Poros, Wealth, is the Reason-Principle of the Universe: we have still to explain Zeus and his garden.

We cannot take Zeus to be the Soul, which we have agreed is represented by Aphrodite.

Plato, who must be our guide in this question, speaks in the Phaedrus of this God, Zeus, as the Great Leader- though elsewhere he seems to rank him as one of three- but in the Philebus he speaks more plainly when he says that there is in Zeus not only a royal Soul, but also a royal Intellect.

As a mighty Intellect and Soul, he must be a principle of Cause; he must be the highest for several reasons but especially because to be King and Leader is to be the chief cause: Zeus then is the Intellectual Principle. Aphrodite, his daughter, issue of him, dwelling with him, will be Soul, her very name Aphrodite indicating the beauty and gleam and innocence and delicate grace of the Soul.

And if we take the male gods to represent the Intellectual Powers and the female gods to be their souls- to every Intellectual Principle its companion Soul- we are forced, thus also, to make Aphrodite the Soul of Zeus; and the identification is confirmed by Priests and Theologians who consider Aphrodite and Hera one and the same and call Aphrodite's star the star of Hera.

The FUMIGATION from AROMATICS. Call Melinoe, saffron-veil'd, terrene, Who from infernal Pluto's sacred queen, Mixt with Saturnian Jupiter, arose, Near where Cocytus' mournful river flows; When under Pluto's semblance, Jove divine Deceiv'd with guileful arts dark Proserpine. Hence, Partly black thy limbs and partly white, From Pluto dark, from Jove etherial, bright Thy colour'd members, men by night inspire When seen in specter'd forms with terrors dire; Now darkly visible, involv'd in night, Perspicuous now they meet the fearful fight. Terrestrial queen expel wherever found The soul's mad fears to earth's remotest bound; With holy aspect on our incense shrine, And bless thy mystics, and the rites divine. Next: LXXI. To Fortune Sacred Texts | Classics « Previous: The Initiations of Orpheus: LXIX: To The Furies Index Next: The Initiations of Orpheus: LXXI. To Fortune » Sacred Texts | Classics

(25) And the same, in the tenth book of the Republic, mentions Eros the son of Armenius, who is Zoroaster. Zoroaster, then, writes: "These were composed by Zoroaster, the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian by birth: having died in battle, and been in Hades, I learned them of the gods." This Zoroaster, Plato says, having been placed on the funeral pyre, rose again to life in twelve days. He alludes perchance to the resurrection, or perchance to the fact that the path for souls to ascension lies through the twelve signs of the zodiac; and he himself says, that the descending pathway to birth is the same. In the same way we are to understand the twelve labours of Hercules, after which the soul obtains release from this entire world.

(10) "Our way of speaking"- for myths, if they are to serve their purpose, must necessarily import time-distinctions into their subject and will often present as separate, Powers which exist in unity but differ in rank and faculty; they will relate the births of the unbegotten and discriminate where all is one substance; the truth is conveyed in the only manner possible, it is left to our good sense to bring all together again.

On this principle we have, here, Soul dwelling with the divine Intelligence, breaking away from it, and yet again being filled to satiety with the divine Ideas- the beautiful abounding in all plenty, so that every splendour become manifest in it with the images of whatever is lovely- Soul which, taken as one all, is Aphrodite, while in it may be distinguished the Reason-Principles summed under the names of Plenty and Possession, produced by the downflow of the Nectar of the over realm. The splendours contained in Soul are thought of as the garden of Zeus with reference to their existing within Life; and Poros sleeps in this garden in the sense of being sated and heavy with its produce. Life is eternally manifest, an eternal existent among the existences, and the banqueting of the gods means no more than that they have their Being in that vital blessedness. And Love- "born at the banquet of the gods"- has of necessity been eternally in existence, for it springs from the intention of the Soul towards its Best, towards the Good; as long as Soul has been, Love has been.

Still this Love is of mixed quality. On the one hand there is in it the lack which keeps it craving: on the other, it is not entirely destitute; the deficient seeks more of what it has, and certainly nothing absolutely void of good would ever go seeking the good.

It is said then to spring from Poverty and Possession in the sense that Lack and Aspiration and the Memory of the Ideal Principles, all present together in the Soul, produce that Act towards The Good which is Love. Its Mother is Poverty, since striving is for the needy; and this Poverty is Matter, for Matter is the wholly poor: the very ambition towards the good is a sign of existing indetermination; there is a lack of shape and of Reason in that which must aspire towards the Good, and the greater degree of effort implies the lower depth of materiality. A thing aspiring towards the Good is an Ideal-principle only when the striving will leave it still unchanged in Kind: when it must take in something other than itself, its aspiration is the presentment of Matter to the incoming power.

Thus Love is at once, in some degree a thing of Matter and at the same time a Celestial, sprung of the Soul; for Love lacks its Good but, from its very birth, strives towards It.

The FUMIGATION from STORAX. O Universal mother, Ceres fam'd August, the source of wealth, and various nam'd: 2 Great nurse, all-bounteous, blessed and divine, Who joy'st in peace, to nourish corn is thine: Goddess of seed, of fruits abundant, fair, Harvest and threshing, are thy constant care; Who dwell'st in Eleusina's seats retir'd, Lovely, delightful queen, by all desir'd. Nurse of all mortals, whose benignant mind, First ploughing oxen to the yoke confin'd; And gave to men, what nature's wants require, With plenteous means of bliss which all desire. In verdure flourishing in honor bright, Assessor of great Bacchus, bearing light: Rejoicing in the reapers sickles, kind, Whose nature lucid, earthly, pure, we find. Prolific, venerable, Nurse divine, Thy daughter loving, holy Proserpine: A car with dragons yok'd, 'tis thine to guide, 19 And orgies singing round thy throne to ride: Only-begotten, much-producing queen, All flowers are thine and fruits of lovely green. Bright Goddess, come, with Summer's rich increase Swelling and pregnant, leading smiling Peace; Come, with fair Concord and imperial Health, And join with these a needful store of wealth.

The FUMIGATION from AROMATICS. DAUGHTERS of Jove and Themis, seasons bright, Justice, and blessed peace, and lawful right, Vernal and grassy, vivid, holy pow'rs, Whose balmy breath exhales in lovely flow'rs All-colour'd seasons, rich increase your care, Circling, for ever flourishing and fair: Invested with a veil of shining dew, A flow'ry veil delightful to the view: Attending Proserpine, when back from night, The Fates and Graces lead her up to light; When in a band-harmonious they advance, And joyful round her, form the solemn dance: With Ceres triumphing, and Jove divine; Propitious come, and on our incense shine; Give earth a blameless store of fruits to bear, And make a novel mystic's life your care. Next: XLIII: To Semele Sacred Texts | Classics « Previous: The Initiations of Orpheus: XLI: To Mises Index Next: The Initiations of Orpheus: XLIII: To Semele » Sacred Texts | Classics