SECRETS 4

PART TWO

THE KINGS AND THE SEMI-DIVINE RACE IN THE POSTDILUVIAL WORLD

Arcas and Arcadia

Arcadia lies in the Peloponnese in southern Greece, isolated from the coast, encircled by high mountains; like a hidden jewel. Its northern and eastern parts are barren, the western and southern veined with fertile valleys and rivers, it is a place rich in rivers. The greatest river in the Peloponnese, Alpheus, arises there and flows across the land, as if following the scent of the Ionian Sea; that it hunts down and joins past Olympia. The river Ladon, emerging from Mount Kyllene, joins with the waters of the Styx stream, that is fed by the Styx waterfall. The ancient people in this mountainous region, herded sheep and goats, feeding from the pastures in the foothills, and mainly subsisted on olives, grapes, goat cheese, honey, and pine honey from the pine trees, wild barley for their bread and hunting.

This mountainous, out of the way place, ill adapted to agriculture, seems a less than pleasing acquisition, and the least likely to acquire the trappings of an ideal pastoral paradise; an idyll of shepherds and the pursuit of love, and later a place of perfect love. This Arcadia is still a potent image in Western consciousness.

Atlas established a kingdom here, and this explains the name Gigantes once given to it, the word is from the Greek gigas, gigat meaning ‘giant’ – and the Titans were a race of giants. This Atlantean presence, may explain why the early inhabitants of this region, known by the generic name Pelasgian, were renowned for their superior knowledge and civilizing skills. The ancient sources call them divine, because they, alone of all the people of Greece, preserved the use of letters after the Flood. They were a race of master masons, their buildings composed of great blocks of stone, fitting exactly together without mortar; which was also called cyclopean because of the enormous size of the stone blocks. They were strongly linked to the arts of metallurgy, and called the ‘sons of the sun’, ‘sons of Hephasestus’, the heavenly blacksmith, the god of fire, fire employed for the manufacture of metal work, decorative arts, technology.

The word Pelasgian is etymologically connected to the root word meaning ‘divide’, in Hebrew peleg. Peleg is the name of the son of the great-grandson of Noah’s son Shem. It was said he was given this name, because at his birth, the nations of the world were dividing. It is also the root word of the Latin pellegrino meaning originally ‘wanderer’ and then coming to mean ‘pilgrim’. And the oceans in Latin and Greek were called pelasgus. Wanderers over the oceans, suits well the antediluvian people, the god-like ones, their homeland destroyed, forced to wander through the postdiluvian world; bringing their superior knowledge with them.

The earliest inhabitants of Arcadia, were said to have lived there before the flood and the creation of the moon; existing on acorns – when the land was called Dynodes meaning ‘land of oaks’.

The first pre-moon proelénaios king was Pelasgius, he was the founder of their race, which was called autochthonous ‘earth born’. While the Atlanteans are born of the earth and the god of the sky/heaven – and it is the divine part, as Plato pointed out, which is the fount of their greatest virtues (and the part that degraded the quickest).

Lycaon, a son of Pelasgius, aided by his impious sons, sacrificed a boy: in some accounts one of his own sons, in others his grandson Arcas. They cut up the body, and cooked the pieces in a soup, which they then served up to the god Zeus. Zeus was so enraged by this act, that he turned Lycaon into the first werewolf; and caused a flood to destroy all of humankind. This flood was called Deucalion’s, because this is the name of the man, a son of the Titan Prometheus, who was warned beforehand by his father of the coming flood; which gave Deucalion enough time to construct an ark and save himself and his family.

Callisto was an earth born daughter of Lycaon, and it’s possible to see in her mythology, the time when the Atlanteans dominated the original inhabitants; and installed their own semi-divine lineage; symbolized by her son Arcas (a bear king who bears) fulfilling an Atlantean cosmic kingly role.

Hermes, who was one of the figures said to have torn Arcas from his dead mother’s womb, is an Arcadian god, born of Zeus and Maia, a daughter of Atlas. In his mythology he is said to have been taught astrology by Aphrodite, identified with his mother Nana, who gave her name to the planet Venus. He was also said to conduct souls to Ariadne’s castle, at the back of the north wind.

After his mother’s death, Arcas was raised by a foster mother, Electra, another daughter of Atlas. He eventually succeeded his uncle to the throne, gave his name to the land (just like Atlas gave his name to Atlantis) and established a dynasty.

When the mythology of this small Atlantean colony is considered, it will be found to be intimately involved in the First Religion’s observance of the importance of the dead, their journey to immortal life; and the mimicking of that journey, by a candidate, on the path of initiation. In fact, the country itself was identified with the land of the dead, for the ancient Greeks regarded the Arcadian Styx falls and the stream flowing from it, as the embodiment of the death river Styx; over which Charon the boatman ferried the souls of the dead to Hades.

The high conical shaped Mount Aroania, now called Chelmos, presides over the Styx falls, as it roars down a series of nine precipices, streaking the cliff face with black and red marks – both death colours. It is an awe-inspiring sight of natural beauty. In winter, the water creates giant icicles, hanging over the gorge below, where the stream of Styx flows; they may be the silver pillars of Styx of which the Greek poet Hesiod wrote.

Styx is from the Greek stygos ‘hatred’ and stygnos ‘gloomy’ and seems an appropriate name for a river that carried the souls of loved ones, from the land of the living. The Arcadian Styx falls – is allocated a similar baleful nature – it was considered poisonous and corrosive by the ancients and could only be transported in the hoof of an ass or an ass-unicorn. Alexander the Great was thought to have been poisoned with a draught of Arcadian Styx water. Scientific analysis of the actual water revealed nothing harmful, although the local inhabitants call it mavronero ‘black water’, and say it is deadly for animals to drink from it. One could conclude, its baleful nature, arose from its association with the dead and black decay.

The Greeks swore their oaths with a libation of water, and the oath sworn by the waters of the Arcadian Styx – a Styx oath first performed during the time of the Titans and continued by the Olympian gods – was so utterly binding, that even the gods feared to break it. I suspect it was such a powerful oath, because of the reverence the Greeks had towards their ancestors, whose souls they believed continued to exist after death; and the waters that carried them over into the next life.

At the base of Styx falls is Styx cave, which among other mythic connections, was the place where the goddess Demeter retreated after the rape of her daughter. Demeter was goddess of nature and she had a daughter called Persephone, who was kidnapped by Hades lord of the realm of the dead and taken to his kingdom; where she was raped and held prisoner. The people of the important town of Pheneus, that stood within sight of the Mount Chelnos and the Styx falls, said that Persephone was dragged into the underworld through a nearby cavern.

Demeter searched over the world for her daughter, her grief slowly turning the earth to a barren wasteland, where neither human or animal could survive. At this point the god Zeus intervened. He persuaded Hades, to release Demeter’s daughter from the Underworld for half the year, and for the other half she would return to his kingdom. With Persephone’s return came the rejoicing of her mother in spring, only to enter mourning once again on her departure, in the black garments of winter.

The Eleusinian Mysteries, first performed at Eleusis near Athens, were in honour of Demeter and Persephone. They were also established at Pheneus and claimed to be the same as those performed at Eleusis.

Initiates were made to swear an oath – perhaps at Pheneus with Styx water – not to reveal what they had witnessed on pain of death. So, the nature of the rites and mysteries they revealed, can only be deducted from what was inferred by remarks made by initiates, poetic references to them, what can be deduced from the mythology they were based on, and from those parts of the rites that were performed in public.

It is known the initiate was profoundly changed by the experience, having achieved an understanding of the immortality of the human soul – mirroring the journey of Persephone who overcame death emerging once more with the living – and freed from the fear of death. The ancients called the Eleusinian Mysteries teletae meaning ‘perfection’, because they were said to induce a perfection of life. The Greek poet Pindar c522-443 BC writing about the Mysteries said:

‘Blessed is he, who having seen these rites

undertakes the way beneath the blessed Earth.

He knows the end of life and its divinely granted beginning.’1

Initiation into these rites, was popular among the most notable in society, including Plato, Plutarch, and in Roman times Cicero and the Emperor Augustus. They lasted for a great length of time c1600 BC – 392AD, a longevity perhaps explained, by their profound positive impact on the participants.

The Eleusinian Mysteries were separated into three parts. The lesser prepared the candidate for initiation, through instructions and purification. In the greater, the candidate fasted and then was given a special drink of barley and pennyroyal, which is now thought to have been laced with a psychoactive ingredient, creating an altered state of consciousness; perhaps from the ergot fungus, or the panaaeolus papilionaceus dung mushroom.

At Eleusis the candidates entered the Telestrion, an underground theatre, at the base of the Acropolis, where they underwent their secret initiation. At Pheneus it was probably somewhere like Styx cave or the Kastria or Lake Caves to the west. Kastria, used since Neolithic times, are caves created by an old underground river. They are entered through a narrow passage, like a birth canal, into an amazing cathedral of stalagmites and stalactites, that occupy three levels, where lake-like expanses of water and pools are found in rock basins.

I wonder if it is through those rites being performed here, that led to the myths of Demeter residing in Styx cave, wailing with grief, after her daughter has been dragged down into Hades through a nearby cavern. Does it lie behind the Arcadian Styx identification with the death river? Or is it because the rites of life-death-rebirth-immortality were already in existence there, and that is why the Eleusinian Rites had such an appeal?

After the candidates mystai, emerged from the underground rites, a bull was sacrificed, and special blood libations poured for the dead. Then a year later, came the final phase of initiation, the highest, the epopteia which means ‘vision’, probably also involving the consumption of a drink laced with a psychoactive ingredient, resulting in a transformative experience, forever seared on their consciousness. Returning home transformed, they would have also been joyful that they had secured themselves, after death, a place in the blissful Elysium fields – where only those who had been initiated were allowed entry. ‘. . . he who passes unsanctified and uninitiated into the world below, will lie in a slough, but that he who arrives there after initiation and purification will dwell with the gods.’2

I wonder if the rites performed at Pheneus were of a more powerful nature, because of the geomancy layered over the physical geography of Arcadia, transforming it into the symbolic landscape of the land of the dead? There flowed the death river Styx, there was found the entrance to Hades – a potent arena for the performing of Underworld rites of death, and rebirth in the Elysium Fields. It is a symbolic Heaven on Earth, with mystic routes of the soul’s journey to immortality, traced over its landscape. Is this connection to the Elysium Fields, the origin of the other Arcadia, an ideal pastoral paradise?

Although these mysteries are in honour of Demeter and Persephone, they also concern the love goddess Aphrodite (Venus). A ritual mimicking sexual intercourse was part of the rites. At Pheneus, the candidate, after a purifying bath, engaged in a love rite with a person representing Aphrodite. At Eleusis a different rite was performed, the candidate inserting a phallus into a ceremonial drum, that contained a sacred calf or knee-high boot, called a buskin, made of cloth or leather.

In an early stage of the Eleusinian rites, a Divine Child was paraded by facilitators of the mysteries, dressed up as shepherds. The Child was said to have been found on a river bank, having passed over the waters in a harvest basket caulked with sedge. He was said to be the son of Daeira, the mother of the Attic King Eleusis, from whom the town and the rites were named. Daeira, whose name means ‘wise one of the sea’ was a daughter of Oceanus, her mythical yearly emerging from the sea at Paplos in Cyprus, was regarded as a renewal of her virginity. According to Robert Graves, she is a version of Aphrodite as virgin, herself born from the sea, her name from aphros meaning ‘foam’; she was created from sea foam and the foam from the severed genitals of Uranus. Her giving birth to the Divine Child as a virgin, is in the ancient guise of the mother of all living, who required no male participation to procreate.

According to Robert Graves the name of the king and the place, Eleusis, means ‘advent’ indicating the arrival of a notable person or thing, in this case, the arrival of the Divine Child. His birthday celebrated in the ancient world at the winter solstice, when the long dark days are coming to an end, means the Divine Child represented the birth of the sun god, eternally young, radiant with vital rejuvenating powers, embodying the greatest light of all, conquering death and decay. Apollo, Dionysus, Mithras all took on the aspect of Divine Child. Plutarch wrote of ‘. . . consecrated priests perform(ing) a secret sacrifice in Apollo’s sanctuary at the time of the awakening of the Divine Child by the Tyiades.’ 3 This is why he was carried ashore in a harvest basket, normally filled with the fruits and crops of the earth, as a thankful offering to the gods that the fertility of the earth had been reborn from barren winter.

In the Eleusinian Rites, one could imagine, the candidate having experienced some profound form of mock death as Persephone, underwent a magical rebirth as the Divine Child, transforming and rejuvenating the soul of the candidate, a new solar infused enlightened soul; emerging from his underground ritual, the fearful shadow of death banished from his life.

Is the significant role of Aphrodite and her child within the Eleusinian rites performed at Pheneus, the origin of an Arcadia, that is the land of love? Time for the narrative to explore the matter.

Theocritus, Virgil and the Eclogues.

The Greek tradition about this other ‘Arcadia’, was first written about in the ‘Idylls’ of the Greek poet Theocritus c310-c250 BC. In his Arcadia, a pastoral paradise, its shepherds and goatherds mainly spend their time conversing on love.

To understand the origins of this Arcadian pastoral ideal in Greek thinking, scholars have speculated it may have roots in Hesiod’s myth of the Golden Age, which I have already mentioned. It is understandable why the comparison was made. In some respects, one could think of the bucolic life as more ideal, freer, than those who bear the drudgery of tilling the earth, harvesting crops, and then ploughing it again ready for new planting. The shepherd could live from uncultivated wild grapes and barley, collecting wild honey free from the trees and busy bees, milk from the goats and sheep. While the flocks graze, the shepherds and goatherds have time to be idle, rest and compose poetry. On an ideal level this does bear some similarity with the Golden Age, where the earth provided sustenance without any toil.

In Theocritus’ Arcadia, the powerful, all-consuming force of love, also carries with it, terrors:

‘Ah baleful Love! Why, like the marsh-born leech,

Cling to my flesh, and drain my dark veins dry?’4

It is a land of love, but one that is the playground of Aphrodite’s unruly children. Eros who shoots flaming darts of sexual attraction, his companions Pathos (longing), and Hirmeros (desire) joining in the sport. While Cupid sends out his own arrows of desire, erotic attraction, love and affection – wounding great and lowly alike, for love doesn’t wait for an invitation.

In Theocritus’s poems, one shepherd dies of unrequited love, another hangs himself. Before he does the deed, he tells the lady who scorned his love, that she will regret her coldness when she looks upon his lifeless body. Unfortunately, she passes by his lifeless form, without a second glance. In another poem, a woman trying to rekindle love for her in the bosom of her lost love, uses magic spells to conjure him back to her. In another the lost love between husband and wife is portrayed.

A hundred and eighty years later, the Roman poet Virgil 70-19 BC, produced ‘The Eclogues’ a body of poems set in Arcadia, and said to be heavily influenced by Theocritus’s previous work; particularly as one of Virgil’s characters bears a name first appearing in the earlier poems. But it is Virgil’s Arcadia, that has had the lasting impact, eclipsing in fame the earlier work of Theocritus. His Arcadia is a place of perfect love.

Virgil, Publicus Vergillus Maro, was born 70 BC near Mantua in Cisalpine Gaul and died 19 BC in Brindisi in Italy. Frederick Ahl, a translator of Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’, came away from his labour, with the impression of an exceptionally elusive personality, adorned with many masks.

His father is equally elusive, with many professions attributed to him, a labourer, a farmer (rich and poor), potter, courier, magician, astrologer, physician and Druid priest. He is sometimes named as Istimicon or Figules, and there is mention of an estate near Mantua in Italy.

From most accounts, physically Virgil the sublime poet, was nothing to write home about, being unadorned peasant in appearance and a voice to match; that was further inhibited by a stammer.

In the tenth century in Europe, a popular legend arose, that Virgil had been a magician of great power. It was said he altered his birth name Vergilius to Virgilius or Virgil, because it was then like the word virga meaning ‘wand’. His cognomen Maro was also thought to be a fiction, said to be an anagram on the two chief themes of his poetry, love amor and Rome Roma.

How this reputation arose is unclear, it may have originated with those who understood he was an initiate, possessing knowledge of the mysteries connected to Arcadia, which I will later show – so much of history is manipulated by unseen hands. It may have been based solely on what he wrote about in his poetry. It may be a combination of both.

In Eclogue VIII, spells are used, that are said to have the power to draw down the moon. His reputed necromantic ability to summon the spirits of the dead, may be connected to those passages in his epic poem ‘Aeneid’, in which the Trojan Aeneas is depicted entering the Underworld to speak with the soul of his father. He was also said to be able to conjure up the female spirits of wisdom termed Gnomai, who lived in the twisting passages of Ariadne’s labyrinth. This may also have a basis in his ‘Aeneid’, for he has Aeneas enter the Underworld through a labyrinth at Cumae, modelled by Daedalus on the one he built at Knossos (which may be equated with the dancing floor he made for Ariadne).

His magical reputation continued in later medieval works. The black magician Klingschor, in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s thirteenth century work ‘Parzival’, is called a descendant of Virgil. Virgil the magician appears in a thirteenth century work ‘Cleomades’, and in the fourteenth century ‘Renart le Contrafait’. And he most famously appears in Dante’s fourteenth century ‘Divine Comedy’, as Dante’s guide through hell.

Virgil’s verse has been referred to as haunting and enigmatic, how true are both terms. His stunning evocation of the earth’s fecund majesty in his Eclogues, envelopes the mind in a wonderful cloth of vibrant nature; and afterwards as a potent memory continues to haunt the avenues of thought. It reminded me of all the English summers I had ever known, rolled into one. But this is the skill of this word wizard.

But his poems are, at the same time, enigmatic, and difficult to interpret or understand as to their true meaning, this in part is the way of poetry – that says more by not saying the thing directly. Graham Anderson of the University of Kent Canterbury, comments upon the shepherd Daphnis, who in Eclogue V plays a powerful and mysterious role (thought to be based on a character of the same name in Theocritus, who dies of unrequited love). ‘Daphnis is a figure of whom it is difficult to find the measures; we have the uncomfortable feeling, wherever we meet him, that the simple cardboard cut-out shepherds who lament for him from time to time. . . know more about him than we do, and that it is difficult to account for him entirely in terms of the scattered Greek and Latin mentions of his name. . .(and) his enigmatic appearances. . .’5

I discovered upon reading the Eclogues, that there were three layers, or themes, encased in its wonderful imagery.

The first is nature, which doesn’t come as a surprise after what I have previously written, and under his pen Arcadia, a green paradise comes alive. There, amongst tall grasses precious herbs grow, garlic, wild thyme, marjoram, bay, vervain, fennel – rub it between your fingers and smell its lovely aroma. Strawberry patches, red jewels scattered on the ground, while above black bilberries await hungry mouths, or grey-white apples from laden branches. Or wandering into a vineyard, where the cicadas scream, to pluck plump, juicy grapes. Or make a garland of lilies, pale violets, poppies, fragrant hibiscus flowers, while listening to splashing streams and the gossip of water nymphs, or the rush of river water. Pause by the sweet-smelling myrtle, beloved of Aphrodite, and pluck its white flowers, or pause by hawthorn thickets where green lizards hide. Roam amongst the trees, airy elms, shady topped beeches, chestnuts, and pause by the sacred oaks, where bees buzz away the day, meeting wood dryads who can tell you about root, trunk, branch and leaf. Or climb to the windy pines, fringing the foothills, where you might encounter the Arcadian god Pan, clumping along on his goat-like feet, smiling sweetly or piping merrily on his reed pipes. Or Hermes might be walking beside him playing with a plectrum, on the tortoise-shell lyre he invented, with cowhide strings. The music and the wind combining as a magical breath invading the greenness.

The next two themes of the poems, two sides of the same coin, are about love – imperfect and perfect love – this is where Virgil’s Arcadia differs from the one portrayed by Theocritus: the playground of imperfect love.

In Eclogue X the shepherd Gallus says that: ‘. . . demented love detains me under arms.’ 6 He is in love with Lycoris, who heedless of his plight, was off enduring hardships, in pursuit of another man. Gallus wishes he were an Arcadian:

‘Arcadians. . . how I wish I had been one of you, and either

Guarded your flock or harvested the ripened grapes!’7

He then explains, if he was an Arcadian, he would not be so demented by love, regardless who was the object of his affection; they would lie in harmony amongst the willows, or under a vine. From this, Virgil’s ‘Arcadia’ is revealed as a place of perfect love. A perfect love that is epitomized by the enigmatic character Daphnis.

There are two mentions of Daphnis in Eclogue II and III. In the first his handsomeness is eluded to (something he himself later states), in the second his abilities and the favours bestowed upon him, brings out envy and destructiveness in another shepherd.

And then in Eclogue V, it is learnt that Daphnis, like a brief shooting star, is dead. His death is met with profound grief, the shepherds mourn, the water nymphs shed tears in their watery homes, beasts refuse to feed, lions roar with grief, even the sun god Apollo leaves the land. And in this profound welter of grief, the land itself becomes a wasteland.

‘From furrows we have often trusted with large barleys

Are born unlucky darnel and the barren oat

For the soft violet, for radiant narcissus,

Thistles spring up and paliurus with sharpened spines.’8

The shepherds raise a burial mound for him, and begin a funeral song in his honour, accompanied by pipes and lyres (this is after all musical Arcadia). And as the singing and musical notes reverberate through the air, perhaps complemented by other sounds of wind, trees and water, and even the distant fluting of Pan’s reeds, the voice of Daphnis is heard:

‘Daphnis am I in woodland, known hence far as the stars.

Herd of a handsome flock, myself the handsomer.’9

Voices are then raised in praise of Daphnis, a sound that reaches the stars. They say Daphnis loved peace and them – and that there is no greater service than love. This paean of devotion continues to assault the doors of heaven, and the soul of Daphnis, transcending the dark tomb of matter, is raised up to those celestial heights.

‘Daphnis in white admires Olympus’ strange threshold,

And sees the planets and the clouds beneath his feet.’10

After this apotheosis, something magical happens on earth, Pan, the shepherds, the Dryad tree spirits, the orchards, the towering mountains, even the rocks are overwhelmed by a wave of joy. This river of joy flows throughout the land, the wolf no longer thinks to harm the sheep, hunting nets are now harmless to deer. And this wave of joy becomes a song ‘A god, a god is he…’11

They set up four altars, two dedicated to Daphnis, two higher ones to Phoebus the sun god, and offer libations of milk, olive oil and wine. Two gifts, a hemlock pipe and a shepherd’s crook, are placed upon one of the altars consecrated to Daphnis. The adoring shepherds say his name shall live forever:

‘So long as fish love rivers, wild boar mountain heights,

So long as bees eat thyme, and the cicada dew.’ 12

Having read this sequence of events, the reader should agree with Graham Anderson, those shepherds know something about this Daphnis, that we don’t.

When they say he is a god, it might be thought, they mean his soul has gained immortality in the land of the gods. But Daphnis hasn’t entered that land, he is at the threshold, so he is positioned between earth and heaven – and it is his arrival there that has made him a god. Of course, in the context of what the narrative has revealed about Arcadian kingship, it is possible to view Daphnis as fulfilling the role of a World Pillar (perhaps his heavenly shepherd crook symbolizes the link). Particularly as a kingly World Pillar, something I haven’t alluded to yet, although it will be explained later in the narrative, was regarded as a conduit for the fertility of the earth.

But the earth has not just become fertile again, when he embodies the link, it is more than that, it has become a peaceful love infused haven: where the wolf doesn’t harry defenseless sheep, the nets of men do not harm the deer; and there is joy amongst the inhabitants, it even permeates to the very earth. Is this because, as Virgil tells us, the shepherd Daphnis loves peace and everyone – a truly exceptional feat on earth (the Sufi Rumi is on a par with Daphnis, he managed to love the Mongols who were threatening to destroy his world). In this aspect, Daphnis appears to embody the Divine Child the son of the love goddess, who has subsumed into his being his mother’s incarnation of perfect love as the morning star (which I will later show, plays a part in this cosmic kingship). For it is in her union with the sun that she sheds this quality of light, the light engendering perfect peace and egoless love now shining over the land. Considering his solar significance, this is most probably why two altars are erected to him, in conjunction with two for the sun god.

This Arcadia of Virgil’s, I then propose, is grounded in his initiate understanding of the ancient mysteries, and his understanding of the semi-divine race, the form of kingship and the religious rites they brought to Arcadia. It can be no coincidence, it is the descendants of this race, he later valorized in his epic poem ‘Aeneid’. It concerns Aeneas, the son of Aphrodite, a Trojan descendant of the Arcadian Dardanus, a native of Pheneus, whose mother Electra the daughter of Atlas, was the same who fostered Arcas. Dardanus left Arcadia, and eventually went on to find the sacred city of Troy and become the progenitor of the Trojan race. And although Aeneas was born a Trojan, the ancient Greek historian and geographer Pausanias 2nd century AD, who visited Arcadia, related the tomb of his father Anchises was in Arcadia, situated at the foot of a hill, that in his honour was named Anchises.

I, for one, am thankful Virgil was so inspired by the semi-divine race, he wrote about them. The works of the Elizabethan dramatist Robert Greene were popular in his day, but producing works in the same era, it is Shakespeare who has become immortal. The same is true with Virgil – people write, but only some people can right write.

Let’s go back to Pheneus and find Dardanus, packing up, ready to leave on his adventures, which will then lead the narrative into the next chapter.

Theocritus, Virgil and the Eclogues.

In Theocritus’ Arcadia, the powerful, all-consuming force of love, also carries with it, terrors:

‘Ah baleful Love! Why, like the marsh-born leech,

Cling to my flesh, and drain my dark veins dry?’4

From most accounts, physically Virgil the sublime poet, was nothing to write home about, being unadorned peasant in appearance and a voice to match; that was further inhibited by a stammer.

I discovered upon reading the Eclogues, that there were three layers, or themes, encased in its wonderful imagery.

‘Arcadians. . . how I wish I had been one of you, and either

Guarded your flock or harvested the ripened grapes!’7

‘From furrows we have often trusted with large barleys

Are born unlucky darnel and the barren oat

For the soft violet, for radiant narcissus,

Thistles spring up and paliurus with sharpened spines.’8

‘Daphnis am I in woodland, known hence far as the stars.

Herd of a handsome flock, myself the handsomer.’9

‘Daphnis in white admires Olympus’ strange threshold,

And sees the planets and the clouds beneath his feet.’10

‘So long as fish love rivers, wild boar mountain heights,

So long as bees eat thyme, and the cicada dew.’ 12

Having read this sequence of events, the reader should agree with Graham Anderson, those shepherds know something about this Daphnis, that we don’t.

Let’s go back to Pheneus and find Dardanus, packing up, ready to leave on his adventures, which will then lead the narrative into the next chapter.

Dardanus and Samothrace

Dardanus was the husband of Chryse, the daughter of the Titan Pallas, and her marriage dowry was the sacred images of the Great Gods. She herself, was a priestess of these Great Gods, and this is most likely how their cultic statues came into the possession of her family.

As an aside, the Titans had so many daughters, because historically the conducting of the ancient ritual mysteries of life-death-rebirth were in the hands of women – mirroring perhaps the woman’s bearing life in her womb, and thereby having power over the threads of life, death and birth. The World Pillar might be male, but its mysteries reside with the feminine.

Dardanus carried these images with him, when he set off across the Aegean Sea. He came to the island of Samothrace, and it is there he established the rites of the Cabiri – the name meaning ‘Mighty Ones’. It is thought to derive from the Semitic kabir meaning ‘great’ or originating in the Phoenician word for ’mighty.

Mighty Ones, are also found in the Bible, recorded in Genesis 6:4, a race of giants who lived before the Flood. Their mythology, and that of the semi-divine race who established the Cabiri rites, indicate they are but Greek and Hebraic versions of the giant Titans.

This is the verse in Genesis, which refers to the Mighty Ones:

‘There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that,

When the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men,

And they bore children to them, the same as being mighty men

Which were of old, men of renown.’

This ambiguous verse has left biblical scholars debating whether, the ‘giants’ are also the ‘sons of God’. The offspring of the union of the sons of God and the daughters of men, in the Hebraic account are called the Nephilim, which most probably derives from the Hebrew root npi ‘to fall’. In Numbers 13:32-33 in the Old Testament, when scouts have been sent out from the camp of the Israelites, to spy out the land of Canaan, they report back; that they had encountered fearsome giants, they refer to as Nephilim. This is the basis for thinking the sons of God were also giants, seeing as their offspring are gigantic.

All these elements of the Hebraic account, mirror the semi-divine race of giants, the Titans – also created from earth and heaven. The leader of the Nephilim, Shamhazi, in one tradition, repents of his sins and is suspended between heaven and earth, mirroring the Titan Atlas bridging the two realms. And in Greek mythology like the Hebraic, it is from the Titans, that a race of renown, a race of heroes is born. The Trojan race, descended from Dardanus, belong to this heroic race.

And these heroes according to traditions voiced in ‘On Heroes’ by the Greek sophist Flavius Philostratus c170/172-247/250, possess the great height of their progenitors. Orestes, son of Agamemnon who fought with the Greeks against the Trojans, was said to be seven cubits tall. A cubic is eighteen inches, so this makes him ten feet tall. When ‘. . . the tomb of Ajax (he also fought atTroy) was destroyed by the sea near which it lies, and bones appeared in it of a person eleven cubics tall.’13 This makes Ajax sixteen feet and six inches tall. Protesilaos, the first Trojan to die at Troy, was ten cubics or fifteen feet tall. Achilles, the hero of the Greeks, was said to be beyond natural size.

There is another characteristic attached to this heroic race, they were literally a shining one. There are these remarks about Achilles in ‘On Heroes’ ‘A brightness radiated from his face. . .Achilles’ hair is thick, lovelier than gold. . .48.2’ 14 This attribute of radiance, is also present in descriptions of the Trojans Hector and Aeneas, although Aeneas is said to be the less radiant of the two. This shining attribute of the race of heroes, is found in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s c1170-c1220 thirteenth century medieval German romance poem ‘Parzival’. In it the Trojans are called love’s lineage – because the mother of Aeneas was the goddess Aphrodite – and their shining countenance has such refulgence, that they light up a room.

This shining attribute of the semi-divine race is also possessed by Noah, as described in the account of his birth in the Book of Enoch. Ethiopian and Greek versions of the book exist, and an Aramaic one in the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating at the earliest from the second century BC. In the Book of Enoch, the Nephilim are referred to as Grigori meaning ’those who watch’, ‘those who are awake’ or ‘those who never sleep’; and were called Watchers and fallen angels. The Watchers in Enoch’s account, mirror the advanced knowledge possessed by the Greek Titans, bringing the secrets of heaven to earth: metallurgy, astrology, medicine and all the civilizing arts.

When Noah is born, he is a shining being and his father believes he is the offspring of the sons of heaven. CV1 ‘And his body was white as snow and red as the blooming of a rose, and the hair of his head and his head and his long locks were white as wool, and his eyes beautiful. And when he opened his eyes he lighted up the whole room. CV.2 ’His father Lamech declares he has begotten a strange son who looks like the sons of god.’15 Nimrod, the great-grandson of Noah, is also described as a Mighty One, and a giant.

These similarities clearly indicate the Hebrews and the Greeks are both recording the same history, of an antediluvian semi-divine race, who survived the flood and stamped their presence on the postdiluvian world. The Greeks themselves recognized this, for according to Eusebius of Caesarea c264-c340, an early Christian bishop and Church historian, they thought Atlas was the same as Enoch, both were said to be renowned astrologers. In some accounts, Atlas and Prometheus are both given Iapetus as their father, who is also equated with Japheth the son of Noah. Robert Graves accounts for this, by relating it to a Canaanite tribe entering Greece, and bringing with them their own Mesopotamian flood legend. Before the story of Noah and the Flood was recounted in the Hebrew Old Testament, it was extant in the mythology of Sumeria.

But to return to Samothrace, the great cultic centre Dardanus established there, exhibited the superior skills in masonry possessed by this semi-divine race. The buildings were made with massive blocks of stone, two giant pillars flanked the entrance to the temple complex, and the Arsinoë Rotunda possessed the largest – over sixty-five feet in diameter – covered round space in all the Greek speaking world of that time. Another building, the Hieros, is equally impressive, possessing a roof with an unsupported span of over thirty-six feet – which was also unequalled by other contemporary building work.

Initiation into the Cabiri mysteries on Samothrace, which were admirably open to slave and freedman alike, involved a vow of secrecy (and with no Styx water at hand), so again there are only clues to what they involved. They were regarded as the second most important mysteries in the ancient world, after the Eleusinian, and ancient authors said the initiates emerged, more pious and just in their behaviour and better in every respect, than they were before.

The Cabiri were twin gods, who presided over the mysteries on Samothrace. Hippolytus c170-c236, an early Christian Church bishop and martyr, in his ‘The Refutation of all Heresies’ recounts the presence of statutes of two naked men depicted with erect phalli, and arms stretched aloft, in the Samothracian temple. Hippolytus referred to one as a primeval man, and the other as a spiritual version. Did they represent the twin Cabiri, and the twin motif of the semi-divine race, who inaugurated the mysteries on earth?

In fact, the Great Gods – who were never referred to by name and speaking about them was taboo – whose images Dardanus brought to Samothrace, have been equated with their Titan ancestors. The nineteenth century scholar George Stanley Faber, in his ‘Dissertation on the Mysteries of the Cabiri’, maintains, according to the Roman statesman and scholar Pliny 23-79, that the Great Gods were seven Titans, who accompanied Noah in the ark, and survived the flood ‘. . . Noah and the seven persons who were preserved with him, the original Cabiri, or the Great Gods. . .’16

This would account for the ark used by the Phoenicians in their Cabiri rites, being in the shape of a boat, and the Cabiri being called the first builders of boats. Also, the temple to Aesculpius, the healer son of Apollo, who was also considered to be one of the original Cabiri or Titans; was so faced and shaped in stone, as to make it resemble a boat. So, one can imagine their rites involving the Great Gods – symbolizing their antediluvian ancestors – would have also involved some form of worship of their great dead.

The mysteries taking place on Samothrace, were held in honour of Demeter, Persephone and Hecate. The narrative has already encountered Demeter and Persephone, but Hecate is a stranger.

Hecate, not surprisingly, was a Titan, an only child, her mother being the Titan Asteria, her father the Titan Perses – from whom she received power over heaven, earth and sea. The etymology of her name is unknown, but it may mean ‘worker from afar’ or ‘she who works her way’. She is a mysterious, somewhat dark deity, ruler of the souls of the dead, and at night was said to send to the earth, demons and other terrible phantoms of the lower world. She frequented graveyards, crossroads and was drawn to the spilt blood of the murdered. She was the goddess of magic, sorcerers, witches, herbs and poisons. She often accompanied the souls of the departed, as they wandered the earth, and dogs would howl and whine at her approach. She aided Demeter in the search for her lost daughter, guiding her through the unforgiving night by the light of two flaming torches. And after Persephone was found, she resided with her in Hades during her six-month captivity and acted as a confidant and adviser.

According to Pausanias, the mysteries on Samothrace came into being, when Demeter entrusted the phallus of Zagreus, into the safe keeping of the Prometheus, whom Pausanias refers to as Tinta Cabiri. Was then Prometheus one of the Great Gods?

Zagreus was a son of Zeus and Persephone, which explains how her mother had possession of her grandson’s phallus (not one would think, an ideal object for any grandmother to own). Zeus (taking his exploits literally, and not symbolically, a god so sexually active, one wonders he had time to sleep, eat and drink) seduced Persephone in the form of a dragon, and afterwards she gave birth to Zagreus. Zeus sat Zagreus on his heavenly throne and gave him his lightning bolts to hurl.

But the Titans sneaked into Olympus, tricked Zagreus into relinquishing the lightning bolts, and then seized him, killed him, and dismembered his body. The heart of the dead Zagreus was made into a potion for Semele the moon, which resulted in her giving birth to the god Dionysus – said to be the reincarnation of Zagreus.

The elements of this myth, point to it being about that old tale of death in winter, and rebirth in spring of the earth. The moon cut up in her phases, emerging whole at the full is symbolic of rebirth, in this case the moon giving birth to Dionysus god of nature’s fertility – it is the rebirth of the earth after winter.

Persephone the mother of Zagreus, queen of the underworld, carries the same symbolism, as I previously explained; when she emerges from her dark kingdom, the earth blossoms in spring.

The heavenly phallus of Zagreus, with this mythology attached to his name, has the hallmarks of a World Pillar, as a conduit for earthly fertility. The Greek historian Herodotus 5th century BC, and the Roman scholar and historian Marcus Terentius Varro 116-27 BC, wrote of their initiation into the first level of the mysteries on Samothrace. Herodotus said he was given revelations about the significance of certain phallic images, and Varro commenting upon the same matter, said they symbolized Heaven and Earth – which is the nature of the phallus of Zagreus.

This must be the phallus, said to have been worshipped at a shrine, in a cave on the island. According to George Stanley Faber ‘The most mysterious rites of the Samothracian Cabiri were performed within the dark recesses of the cave Zerinthus. . . the Cabiri cavern was symbolical of the Hades of Epoptac, or the vast central cavern of the earth out of which the water of the deluge principally issued.’ 21 The cave was also called Saon or Zaon, meaning ‘the illustrious sun’. The cave symbolic of Hades, the realm of the dead, and near to the primeval waters lying beneath the earth, has the hallmarks of an entrance to the Underworld. Its connection to the sun would, as in the rites in Arcadia, represent solar rejuvenating powers, overpowering the darkness of death and decay, in the rebirth of the candidate. This power would have been symbolized by the sacred Zagreus phallus – his celestial dismemberment, symbolic of the heavenly template, behind these earthly cycles of death and renewal. I wonder if during the rites on Samothrace, a priestess representing Hecate, acted as a guide through the trials of initiation, the candidate faced – for she was the fearless mistress of any dark forces they might encounter.

It should be no surprise that matters of life-death-rebirth, the Underworld and in the being of the Great Gods the illustrious great dead; should lie behind the mysteries performed on Samothrace – they are the key features of the First Religion of the semi-divine race.

Dardanus, after establishing the rites of his and his wife’s semi-divine heritage on Samothrace, decided to leave the island. So, there he is packing up his things again, but this time leaving behind the sacred images of the Great Gods. Taking a boat – with the narrative following closely behind – he sets out over the Aegean Sea,

cDt

SECRETS 4

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SECRETS 4

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