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Hello, I'm Susan Sandon. In the previous program of Mythos, Joe Campbell discussed the historical roots of the Judeo-Christian tradition in the Exodus. But history tells just half of the story. As the philosopher Novala said, the seat of the soul is where the inner and outer world meet. The outer world of history changes with time. The inner world, the spiritual world, is constant to the human race. And it is myth that provides the link between these two worlds.
It is one of Campbell's strongest beliefs that our inherited tradition emphasizes the outer world and historical interpretation of religious events to the very great detriment of our inner world. The link myth usually provides has been broken. Campbell insists on a different interpretation, an interpretation that can be found in ancient Greece. He concludes this first set of programs in the mythos series with an exploration of the mystery religion of Elusus where familiar symbols of worship take on significantly different meaning.
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I've been thinking what aspect of uh the later forms we've gone through a long history here almost 200 100,000 years and uh what would be the best conclusion and I decided that the Greek classical mystery religions would be the great conclusion. The [cough] essence of the spiritual experience intended is that of shifting consciousness from the purely phenomenal aspect of one's life to the spiritual, the deep, the energetic uh eternal aspect. And uh here were many many rituals associated with this. They go way back into the Bronze Age in their beginnings and with the coming in then of the homeriic patriarchal warrior people they moved into the background for a while but then came forward again the mysteries of Elusus this wonderful shrine just outside of Athens which was the sacred spot for the Athenian population has a background way into the Bronze Age and it survived then in the classical world through Roman times until the conversion of the Roman Empire into a a Christian empire with um Theodosius.
With Constantine around 3:27 or so AD, Christianity was recognized as one of the permitted religions in the Roman Empire. And very shortly later with Theodosius, end of the fourth century and beginning of the fifth, uh, Christianity was declared to be the only permitted religion in the Roman Empire. And not only Christianity, but the specific form of Christianity that was that of the Byzantine throne. And so a system of uh violent persecution and u vandalism begins. the destruction of shrines and the more sacred the shrine the more violent uh the destruction and what happened in Illus is an example.
Meanwhile, however, in the hellistic period up to that that crisis in western civilization um many of the earlier mystery cults had come back into manifestation. And it's it's my belief that the great insight that St. Paul had on the road to Damascus was that the uh death of Christ of Jesus on the cross could be interpreted in terms of the classical mystery religions of the death and resurrection of the savior. the death to one's purely material animal existence and the birth then of the spiritual life. This is symbolized in the Christian terminology with the transformation of the old Adam into the new Adam. And you have the theme, O Felix Kulpa, oh happy fall. that in the garden, the fall of man into the field of time, out of the timeless uh rapture, you might say, of Eden, uh was followed then by the coming of the savior who represented a sublimation, a higher manifestation of uh the uh consciousness of humanity than that which had been represented in the garden. So without the fall, there would have been no savior. And all of this is really mystic language from the the Greek mysteries.
So I thought I would start a run through some of the material of the Greek mystery religions. We actually know very little about them because they did remain mysteries. No one was allowed to betray or talk about what went on in the in the sanctuaries. We have to depend on outside observations. Some of the observations being those of um people like Clement of Alexandria who are attacking the classical mysteries and uh from them we can judge somewhat what the rituals were like but uh the best evidence I think is in the art ceramic art and other art where we have little clues. So I just want to run through some of this and try to convey some sense of what the rituals intended and what their forms were.
Now in the classical world, the uh planting time was in the fall and the harvest was in the spring. And then the fruits of the harvest, the grain was stored in silos in the ground during the fierce heat of the summer for then planting again in uh the fall. Consequently, the richness, the wealth of the community was in the keep of the underworld, the cathonic underworld divinity, Pluto or Hades. Here is Atheni giving the grain to Pluto in his aspect as Puer Eternis, eternal boy. The notion, the mythology, the cult idea was that uh Elusus was the place where grain agriculture was first invented by Deita, the goddess of the Teluric earth. That's a just a mythological idea. This is not the place of the origin of great agriculture as we all know. But for the cult, so it was. And here it is being given to Pluto the the eternal boy.
Now a deity like Pluto and this is true also in the Celtic stories of Merlin can be represented either as a youth or as an old man. And here is Pluto as the aged one with the cordicopia with the bounty of our uh life in his keep. The notion that it's out of the abyss that life comes is is very important. Out of the darkness of the abyss, the cathonic realm. And so these cults are very much associated with the death into the underworld and the life again. And this was symbolized through the analogy of the planting of seed and the coming to life again. The use of agricultural imagery to render a spiritual message is what we have here.
This is from a vase in the uh museum in Naples. Here we have the candidate for illumination being received by the su pompos the uh guide of uh the u sanctuary. Over here stands a figure and the club tells us who it is. It is Heracles or Hercules. And we're going to see him in an interesting situation a little on in the ceremonial uh adventure here. Then bearing a torch, which means we're going into the dark realm, uh the candidate is conducted into the shrine.
Now, here is a sarcophagus also in the Naples Museum that shows something of what went on. And I'm going to deal with it now step by step. First we start here. Here is a laurel tree which is apotropeic. That is to say it depends the threshold against evil presences. It has a a sanctifying power as a threshold tree. Beside it is an aspect of Bakos or Dionisos, the same deity known as Yahos, which is a cry of greeting that was uh uttered at a certain moment in the ceremony when the revelation the uh uh showing forth of the uh the new birth was rendered. He stands here by an altar with fruits of offering. And here we have the torch which always indicates the underworld oric adventure.
We move then along and here are the two great goddesses. This is Deita or Demiter seated on the sacred basket with the serpent. And here is her daughter Pphanany who is the one who dies and is resurrected. She is to be abducted and then will return. The Anados and Cathos of the maiden. The torch of deer or demeter is held upward purifying the upper regions that of pphanany downward purifying the lower. So the this is a purification passage. And these two figures are going to be the dominant figures in this whole cult. The dual goddess, the goddess of life and the goddess of the underworld out of which new life comes. And here then is the candidate with his head uh covered. He is going to experience a revelation, an epiphany, a showing forth. And an epiphany is the showing forth of the mystery to a person who experiences it for the first time. Here is a uh the guide who guided us in pouring offerings. And this figure standing here is Bakos Dionizos. And the figure behind him is Hecati. That is the uh dark uh negative aspect of the goddess often associated with witchcraft.
And so here's the story. Pphanie, the daughter of Deita, was out picking flowers in the spring and suddenly Pluto or Hades appears in his chariot and rushes off with her. Now there have been some very interesting recent researches made in the plants associated with these cults and barley is very closely associated. There's a barley drink that is consumed by the uh the people who are going to go through the great ceremony before uh attending the rights. One of the important uh hallucinogens is airgot which is a parasite on barley and it is believed now by many that the barley broth contained a bit of this air gut. There was a family that for many many centuries had been in charge of the rights. There is a very fine uh study called the way to elus published by uh written by uh Huffman who is the man who invented LSD and Gordon Wassan and a uh classical scholar uh whose name just comes come to me right now. This book deals with the whole ritual of Elusus in detail as a uh ceremony associated with a matching of the state of rapture of the people who have taken the uh drink and the theatrical performance that is rendered in the way of an epiphany. So that there's an inward readiness and an outer fulfillment that works. Socrates himself is reported to have spoken about the importance to him of the experience at Elusus. Something in the way of a revelation was actually experienced there.
So she is carried off to the underworld. Now her mother Deita just as Isis was bererieved of Osiris so Deita of Pphanie she goes to follow her and find her lost daughter. Now when Deita had come to Elusus, she sat down by a well just as Isis sat down uh outside of the palace when she came to the place where her husband's uh body and sarcophagus were enclosed in the palace pillar and people come out to the well tried to comfort her. That well is still there. It's been reconstructed as you as you can see, been put together again. Here she is at the well. Uh the people come to comfort her, but she is disconulate until an obscene little creature comes named Bowo and does an obscene dance. And then Deita has to laugh. That's all. And this is a wonderful motif. the obscinity. You move out of the sphere of the developed person back into the sphere of the nature dynamics of uh generation and regeneration and all that into another perspective and are are released from uh the bondage of your grief.
Here now we have the return of the maiden. This beautiful thing was found in an Italian estate, the garden of an Italian estate. But uh those who know about these things declare that the style is that of fifth century Greece. And it is a beautiful thing the tenderness of the whole uh composition of the return now after having gone down and into the agonies of whatever it might have been in the underworld, the return of Pphanie. And this gorgeous thing there she is. This is a lovely bronze a pphanany and equivalent to her is the stalk of a golden stalk of wheat.
Now Clement of Alexandria mocks theian [snorts] mysteries and says what a silly thing to have the culminating moment be that of the elevation of a grain of wheat. Those of you who know anything about the Roman Catholic mass know that the culmination is the elevation of a wafer of wheat. It's not the object, it's the reference that is the sense of a ritual and any object can become the center of the cult. And in this case it is the wonderful food plant that which nourishes our physical life as the nourisher also of our spiritual life by being consumed with the understanding that it is a divine gift. The earliest primitive rights associated with food plants. The uh the typical myth is the underlying myth of a deity of some kind who has been killed, cut up and buried and out of the buried parts of the deity the grain comes or the whatever the food plant. Longfellow's Hayawatha speaks of the visionary uh experience of a young man who went forth for vision and a young deity comes to him and wrestles with him for three nights and then on the fourth night says now you're going to kill me and bury me and out of this comes the grain of maze. The meditation is that we are eating divine substance and this divine substance is what is feeding us and it isn't just physical substance and that's that's part of the meditation how our whole life is a life that is uh supported by the giving and yielding of some transcendent power.
People ask me sometimes you know what rituals can we have? You've got the rituals only you're not meditating on them. When you eat a meal, that's a ritual. Just realize what you're doing. When you consult with your friends, that's a ritual. Just think what you're doing. When you beget a child or give birth to a child, what more do you want?
Here is this uh this young youth now who is going to go forth with the grain. He is being blessed by Deer and Pphanany. And there he goes being blessed. And here is the vehicle. Here he is as an old man on this mystic vehicle with the blessing of the wheat, the grain. And here is Hermes who is leading him with the kaducious as his staff. Now we're going to turn this vase around and we see Dionisos being led by a bread and the wine of the mass. What the uh rituals of the early Christian tradition uh were built on were rituals that were already there. And so we get a sense of how rights and myths do develop organically without breaking off. New readings, new vocabularies, new sophistications are brought in. This is the chalice of the mass with the blood of Dionizos, which is the wine, the transubstantiated wine. But in this ritual, it doesn't even have to be transubstantiated because it is already the divine wine.
Now, the story of the birth of Dianizos, he's b born from the thigh of Zeus. Zeus had a way of giving birth to children. he swallowed Atheni's mother uh when he knew that she was pregnant. And then of course one day he has a fine headache. She's given birth already and he's got to uh be the medium and he's screaming with a headache when uh the uh Vulcan, the mechanic of the gods comes in and with an axe splits Zeus's head open and out jumps Atheni fully armed move. Voila. And uh here we have the a similar thing now with Dianisos. Similey, Dionizo's mother, had conceived of Zeus and she had the indiscretion to boast of this to uh, Hia, Zeus's wife. And Ha said, "Yes, darling, but Zeus has not revealed himself to you in the same majesty with which he has revealed himself to me." So, next time Zeus comes along, she's sulking and uh, he says, "What's the matter?" She said, "Well, you haven't revealed yourself to me in the same majesty as to Hera." Well, he said, "Now look out. You're not quite ready for this." And uh and she said, "Well, you've [clears throat] always told me you'd do anything I asked." He said, "All right, look out, girly." Bang. And that was the end of her. But then he was uh very much concerned about the fetus in her womb. And so he took it out and uh slid open his thigh and put Dionos in there. So Dionisos is the one of two wounds. The the female mother life and then the male initiation right. And then of course he has a pain in his leg one day. And here comes Hermes now to receive the little child who's just been born on a golden cloth. And he turns her over to the three uh nymphs. And so little Dianisos is raised and brought up uh by the nymphs. Here he is at the tree. Here is the serpent. Here's the whole story again. It's wonderful the way these things recur. Doesn't take too much time and study to learn this pictorial vocabulary. It's a pictorial script and the rearranging of the forms rearranges [clears throat] the order of the experience, the depth of the experience or the precise relevance to this or that myth.
This now is the young Dionisos. He turned out to be quite a lovely chap now associated with Dionos. The appalonian religion of the Olympians of Zeus and so forth was lightoriented. Dionizos represents the dynamic of the dark and so he's properly associated with these mystery rituals. I would say that the best at least in my experience the best uh discussion of the two Dionisos and Apollo the dynamic of time which destroys in order to bring forth time rolls through all things bringing forth new forms and destroying all and in contrast to that the light world of Apollo in and its uh interest in the exquisite differences of forms, the attention to the differences of forms, what nit calls the principium individuatus and the indifference to the differences but just the representing of the dynamic. This is what is represented by the contrast of these two gods. And in nichch's book, the birth of tragedy, they are shown in relation to the whole world of the classical arts. The power of Dionisos is uh to ride on the full fury of the life force. That's what he represents.
There's Dianisos himself as the source of the plants. And these are the backy celebrating him. Here he is as an image being woripped. And here he is as the content of the basket, the old rather than the young. So the essential message of the rights apparently is that of a realization in a uh in a properly prepared way of the dynamic of inexhaustible nature which pours its uh energy into the field of time and with which we are to be in harmony with both its destructive and its productive aspects. It's an experience of the life power in its full career.
Here's Dionis. Here is Simi, his mother. Here is the cup of his blood. I'm reminded of medieval pictures of the coronation of the virgin by her son Jesus where the two are shown about the same age, 35 or so. And here is the cup, the chalice of the mass and the cup of the blood of Dionizos, the lord of the energies of life.
The gods and goddesses are unfamiliar, their names confusing. Pluto and Hades are one and the same, as are Heracles and Hercules or Bakus and Dionis. The stories fold and wrap together, and the mysteries are indeed mysterious. But certain themes emerge and we begin to recognize echoes of our own religious experiences. Joe does not judge these myths right or wrong, but rather effective or ineffective. Do they provide us with an experience of the world that satisfies our needs both as practical humans and as human humans who are aware of the eternal spiritual aspect of life? Campbell gives us a step-by-step initiation into the spiritual world by interpreting the stages ancient initiates would follow in their ritual experience.
Now, what I want to do is talk about this bowl. It's called a Petroasa bowl. It was dug up uh about 100 years ago in Romania in a place called Petroasa. It's a golden bowl dug up together with a whole hoorde of gold objects. It was taken to the British Museum and reproduced. And this is from the reproduction during the First World War when the Germans were moving into Romania. It was thought that it would be good to protect this from the Germans who might take it and put it in the Berlin Museum perhaps. So it was brought to Russia together with the other gold pieces where it was of course melted down into gold. So we don't have it. Uh what we have to deal with is the uh reproduction.
Here is the goddess seated in the center on the basket with the vine that is to become the wine that is in the chalice here or the grail. That's the mother universe with the blood of her child, her son. Here is the vase itself. Now, there are 16 figures round about. In the center is the goddess with the vase. And I've had this turned into a drawing so that we can go through the story step by step. And this will be our initiation.
This is Orpheus. Orpheus the fisher. The theme of the fishing of fish out of the water into the light is associated with initiation. Here we are lost in the waters of ignorance and Orpheus the fisher will fish us out. In the grail romances, this is a theme related to the fisher king. In the Christian tradition, when Jesus called his apostles who were fishermen, he said, "I will make you fishers of men." That's the same Orphic idea. The Pope's ring is known as the fisherman's ring. And on it is an engraving of the Hall of Fishes. And so here we have Orpheus with his fishing rod with the net and under him here the fish.
This now is the candidate bearing a torch. As he enters the sanctuary, he takes from a basket a cone, a pine cone. The basket is on the head of a door guardian. Here is one of these door guardians. This magnificent thing is uh in the museum at Elusus. It's one of the pieces that was smashed by the zeots of love. The um the basket on the head is the sacred basket. This is in the Vatican. It's about uh 12 feet high. It is a bronze pine cone that was formally in the uh in in the Roman field of Mars. The pine cone is what was taken from the basket by the candidate. Why a pine cone? What is it that is important in a pine cone? What is important is the seed and not the cone. And so in each of us, what is important is the seed of consciousness which is to be released, the new atom, the reborn one after the death of the old.
This is a Christian lamp of about the third century. And what it represents is the Jonah legend as symbolic of the coming of the human out of the fish condition. And so so you can take a legend and read into it a mystic reading which may or may not may not have been there in the first place. The Jonah story of the uh the missionary who was to go up to Nineveh or some place like this and then was a source of trouble to everyone. Evidently he was off center. He was a negative presence. Thrown overboard, consumed by a fish, and then out of the fish again. This is the night sea journey. It's an old old story. Hayawata was consumed by a fish. Um the uh raven hero of the northwest coast Indians was consumed by a fish and so forth. This is the going down into the abyss coming out again. The same mythology that we're dealing with here.
And so our friend has taken the uh pine cone and now led by a female guide with the little pale of the elixir of immortality. He is brought to the sanctuary of the two goddesses. They are to meet her with the raven of death on her shoulder. She is the one in the field of birth and death. Birth and death. What we call the turoric earth. The earth with from which the plants grow. And beside her then is Pphanie with the torch who represents the Cathonic Earth, the deep caves of the abyss. This is the first stage of his initiation. We do not know what the rights were that were associated with this pair, but we do know what the message is to come into that harmonious relationship with these two aspects of our being. And then when the hero has gone through this, he is symbolically older and so is represented with a beard being blessed then by Fortuna. Now that's his first initiation. That's the first grade of initiation through the goddesses. The second grade is now to come.
This is the ultimate depth initiation. Here is Pluto or Hades, the god of the abyss. And under his feet is a kind of alligator monster of the abyssal waters. He holds an enormous cornucopia in his hand. Here is our candidate now in the aspect of youth again about to experience another initiation. He holds the palm in his hand which is the palm of the pilgrim. And the scholars who have examined this suggest that what is in his right hand here is a poppy plant which would be associated with dream and sleep and vision.
And now what is to be the fruit of this experience of the ultimate depth? This figure is Heracles. He is in the garb of a woman. The most macho of all the gods is here in woman's garb. One of the experiences of this initiation is to be of our transcendent androgenity that in time we are simply one fraction of what we truly are and so the experience of the androgine androgenity Heracles as a woman and of course in the Heracles legend there's the story of his service in female role at one time and now these These two are the twin heroes, Castar and Pollock. Castor is mortal and Pollock is immortal. They are twins and so are we both mortal and immortal. So the sense of this final initiation is not only of the androgenity, the transcendence of the pair of opposites of our sexual identification, but also the recognition that our mortality and our immortality are one. This is the union of the lunar and the solar consciousness that I've been talking about for two days.
And so we have our hero when he has passed through this initiation. The breasts, my artist didn't bring them out as strongly as he should have. They're the woman's breasts. On his head are the wings of the spirit. And in his hand is a bowl ready to have contents put into it. He is male and female. And here then are the twin heroes, Pollock and Castor. This is the mortal one. And here's the raven of death on Castar's shoulder. So we've come back, cycled around, and death is coming back to us. And then we come forth from the initiation in one character, namely mortal male or mortal female. And the bowl is now full of the fruit of wisdom. Here is the female guide that leads us on. And she brings our hero with his full bowl to the very throne of Apollo, the lord of light. Wonderful. We have the Dionian and the appalonian principles in the harmonious relationship here. And he holds in his hand the liar of the music of the spheres which sing through all things. Under his uh throne there lies a deer which is an animal associated with Apollo.
And now I want to go to the middle of the petroap bowl. This figure with the chalice that we've we've already seen. Uh this is the condition of the uninitiated mind. The mind that has not experienced the initiation. It is as it were in sleep. And here what it sees is a dog chasing a rabbit. It sees a lion consuming a gazelle. It sees a leopard consuming a gazelle. It sees two gazels consuming a plant. All is sorrowful. Oh dear. Oh dear. But the illuminated one knows that this is a manifestation in secondary forms of the dynamic of the process of being.
In the early years of Christianity, a symbolic interpretation of its story existed side by side with a stricter historical reading of the same story. But this was not to last. With Byzantine Christianity established as the only official religion of the Roman Empire, the mystery religions were suppressed and with them the mystical interpretation of Christianity. This interpretation would remain closed to the West until the Renaissance. Joe demonstrates the power of symbols when read mystically by connecting the imagery of the Greek pagan world to that of Christianity. He concludes with a pointed discussion of the core beliefs of the Christian church.
>> Now I want to introduce you to the symbolism of this epalonian idea as it was reawakened in the Renaissance. This whole thing was really lost during the deep middle ages. However, during the first three uh centuries of the Christian development in the near east, there was developing alongside of it. I mean before those Theodosius came down with the acts of love, the uh there was developing beside it the uh classical hermetic uh traditions and a body of texts known as the corpus hermeticum developed at the time of the Renaissance. Kosibbo de Medici asked uh Fino, Marcilio Ficino to make a translation from a Greek text that was brought from Bzantium by a Greek uh monk to make a translation from the Greek into Latin of the Corpus Hermeticum. Ficino did so and immediately medieval art took on a whole new radiance. Badelli was absolutely filled with this and what was recognized was that the symbolic imagery of the pagan world was equivalent in its mystic meaning to the mystically interpreted symbology of Christianity. Uh there's a room in the prao with about five tishions from this time. some of them of Old Testament, you know, fall of in the Garden of Eden, others of classical scenes, and they're all singing the same song. This was a great moment in the Renaissance, and it it brought forth, as you know, a glory of art. And it came precisely from the inspiration of this translation of the corpus hermeticum where the very symbols of the Christian cult, which as we have seen go back to the classical world, could be reinterpreted in terms of hermetic rather than of mosaic mythology.
In the uh bouier chambers of the Vatican, there is a great picture by Pinterukio of uh the goddess Isis on a throne instructing two disciples. One of them is Hermes and the other is Moses. These are the two ways of reading symbolic forms. Hermes the hermetic symbolic way. Moses the literal prosaic historical way. This two aspects and take the one you want. This is a fruit of this great moment.
This is one page from a book called Practica Musa by a man named Gaffurius and the date is 1493. And what it shows is the whole mystery of the nine muses and the three graces in relation to the talmic sequence of the planets earth, moon, mercury, venus, sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and the fixed stars. I want to go through this now in some detail. It's a it's a wonderful uh summation of both Renaissance and classical mysteries. Associated with each of the planets in this tic sequence is a muse. There are nine muses. The muses are clothed. Art is the clothing of a revelation. When we get up here at the very throne of Apollo, we have three graces naked there. The revelation is achieved and rendered to which the arts are pointing. Nine muses and the square root of nine is three. When Dante beheld Batrice, she was nine years old. And then his second beholding of her, she was 18 and so was he. And he said she is a nine because her root is in the trinity. She was his muse. The muses are nine and their root is in the trinity which in the hermetic system is represented in female form. Whereas in the Christian it is in male form. The three persons in the one substance of the one substance of the divine trinity in its mystery. The substance here is personified as Apollo male and the moved features are female. The text says the radiance, the this of the appalonian mind moves everywhere. The muses, the muses, the inspirations of poetry, which is to say of religion, of mythology are moved by the radiance of God.
First, we have this fantastic tale of a serpent culminating in three faces. When Dante was lost in the middle of the way of our life, he was in a dangerous wood and was threatened by three animals. One was the lion, which represented pride, hanging on to ego, hanging on to yourself. The second was a leopard, representing lust. In this case, it's represented by a dog's face, desire. The third animal was a wolf, which represents fear, the past, which tears away what you've got. And so these three, they go together. This is the temptation of the Buddha. If he hung onto his ego, lust and fear would have moved him. They didn't. They're moving us. And so we're stuck.
The first of the muses, her name is Talia, is shown under the ground. She's called silent Talia because we can't hear her as long as we're hanging on to ego and fear and desire. We're not hearing the voice of the universe when we're hanging on to our own personal problem. So relax. I think I showed here the figure of death playing the violin to the artist. Let death talk to you and uh you break out of your ego pride. That means you've got to put your face in the mouth of the lion. Face the real experience of today. Don't reread it in terms of past experiences. One of the problems of Zen is that of having an experience. People talk about trying to uh learn the meaning of life. Life has no meaning. What's the meaning of a flower? Um what we are looking for is an experience of life. Getting the experience and we're shutting ourselves off from the experience by naming, translating, and classifying every experience that comes to us. We fall in love. Okay. Is this going to lead to marriage or am I is this illicit or why don't you've you've classified and lost the experience. So um put your head in the lion and just think I don't know what the hell's going on and and something will come out of it. The uh the experience will be then graded according to the distance along this body. This is called Turborus the threeheaded dog that gods the seed of hell. And this is the tale of up which we come to the very throne of God. As we rise along the scale here through this exaltation we come finally to the radiance the appalonian radiance which moves the three uh graces. Here is Euphrin pouring the energy down into the world. Over here is agia splendor carrying it back. And in the middle is Talia, the same name as our goddess down here, who unites the two. Now, remember, this is a translation of the classical pagan hermetic symbology in the biblical translation that [clears throat] was recognized. These three female forms become the persons of the trinity. The male persons of the trinity. Jesus pouring the grace into the world coming in love. The pariclete carrying us back and the father uh of whom who in whose right and left sides are these two powers and then instead of simply the radiant substance we have a personification of that substance as Apollo.
Now these notes here uh represent the uh conjooint tetra chord. This is what we now would call the a minor scale. Music in these different modes representing the different moods and grades of this exaltation. And these then are the names actually of the notes of the scale in in their classical forms. Now this is a very compact statement of the relationship of the arts to exaltations and the transformations of consciousness.
And now in one of the catacombs, I forgot which one we have at the ceiling Orpheus playing the liar where you would have expected to see the Christ. The animals, the lion will lie down with the lamb. Not at all. The lion's going to eat the lamb. But don't worry, nothing's happening. You see here then are figures from the Old and New Testament. A coordination here in early Christian Rome of not only Old and New Testament, but New Testament and the pagan tradition. And why not? You know, there was a great deal of discussion in the first four centuries as to whether Christianity had anything to do with Judaism. That is to say, was the son Jesus the son of Yave or of a higher power of which Yave was ignorant? Yave was called the fool because he didn't realize there was a higher power than himself. He thought he was God. And the the son then who was to carry us past this was a revelation of a higher light. And so Yave was associated with the demi urge who brought about all the agony and uh uh evil and sorrow in the world. This is a very definite uh thrust in the early Christian tradition. And it was simply a matter of fortune that the new and old testaments were then united and the new seen to uh seen as a fulfillment of the promise of the old. That's why when you read or open a Bible, if you're in the Old Testament, you'll see a lot of footnotes pointing to predictions for texts in the New and vice versa. So, they were woven together. Well, you could have woven it back to the Greek tradition just as well. There were there were those traditions also, but why should they be separated?
So, read mystically, and this is the point I'd like to bring out. read mystically. All of these traditions are telling us this great great story of our identity with the eternal power and our loss of that sense of identity when we get involved in the ego restricted and bound world of fear and desire. Now the religious tradition that was put into you in infancy is still there. There's no use getting rid of it. And just because you can't interpret these forms in terms of modern scientific realizations, there cannot of have been an ascension to heaven. There cannot have been an assumption to heaven. There is no heaven. As I say, even at the speed of light, those bodies would not be out of the galaxy yet. And they were taught that this was a physical assumption and ascension. Can't have been. This is losing the message in the symbol and the coordination of earthly and spiritual realizations can be interpreted out of those symbols.
Now here is another aspect of Orpheus torn apart as Jesus was torn apart in the scourging and crucifixion. And what does this represent in the older uh let's say corpus hermeticum way of reading it? The eternity is in love with the forms of time. But to come into those forms, it has to be dismembered. And then you as a separate entity in the form of time, in order to lose your commitment to this little instance, you must be dismembered and opened to the transcendent. So the cross in this tradition represents the threshold from eternity to time and from time back. And those are the two trees in the garden. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the tree of going from unity into multiplicity. And the tree of eternal life is going from multiplicity to unity. It's the same tree in two directions. in some of the uh discussions in the rabbitical midrash and uh uh arguments of that those centuries the first five centuries or so of the Jewish uh tradition in uh in in the diaspora the question of what about the two trees in the garden is discussed and they're seen in various aspects but it all comes out in these two senses and so Orpheus coming into the world and man being torn apart and his head ripped off and the head floats down out to Lesbos still singing singing the song of the muse and here's a young uh composer who's listening to the song and writing it down and he'll sell it. So this is the this is the way to get your art from the muses.
And finally, do you see what we have here? Oros bakos crucified. There's the crucifixion as metaphysical symbol and Orpheus in the same sense as the Christ. And he goes to the cross like a bridegroom to the bride. And you have the death and resurrection motif of the moon, the seven planets. And you remember the seven little figures standing with pigtails in the fig. All you have to do is spend a little while with these things and they they sing. They sing to you. [clears throat]
And so now uh I want to come to just a a brief reference to what happened with Christianity in those in those early centuries. What happened uh was a conflict between the interpretations of the Christ either as an example of the mystery hero who dies to be re resurrected or as the unique incarnation. That was the big argument between the Gnostics and the Orthodox community. And the Orthodox community opted for the importance of the historicity of the incarnation. And to know what the Christian belief is, all you have to do is recite the crado uh with attention to what you're saying. I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. That's that. and in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, was crucified or judged by by Pontius Pilot, judged by Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. Now th those lines, judged by Pontius Pilate, crucified, died, and was buried are the only historical uh statements in that sentence. The rest of it is mythology. He descended into hell. This is all to be taken literally. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven. Sitted at the right hand of the father. From whence he shall come to judge the living and the dead. Do you believe those things literally?
>> Yes.
>> Good for you.
>> I believe in the Holy Ghost.
>> Yes.
>> The Holy Catholic Church. The communion of saints.
>> The forgiveness of sins.
>> The resurrection of the body. Good for you
>> and life everlasting.
>> Amen. Now, the resurrection of the body, I can give you some assurance on that. You'll be 35 years old. This is the body in its perfection. So, uh try to remember how it was back there or get ready for a good-looking condition and you'll have life everlasting, 35 years old, and won't it be a boar? Okay, that's the story.
>> We have come a long way from the birth of mythology in the human soul to the emergence of our Judeo-Christian tradition in Egypt and Greece. All along, Joe Campbell has been telling two stories at the same time. The story of our outer world, humankind's development through history, and the story of our inner world, that of the universal themes constant to the human race. In the next set of programs in the mythos series, Joe Campbell turns east to India and the Orient. He explores how these universal themes take distinct and Joe argues more sophisticated form in the symbolic language of Hinduism and Buddhism. See you next time.
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