Federica wrote: ↑Sun Mar 19, 2023 9:05 am
AshvinP wrote: ↑Sun Mar 19, 2023 1:21 am
Wow, that's a grim one, Federica
. Thanks for sharing! The Greek myths are always interesting and complex. Even their Divinities were clothed in very human qualities (for good esoteric reason).
The resentful-revengeful dynamic between the brothers of course reminds of Abel and Cain, where the latter became resentful of the former due to God's favoring Abel's sacrificial offering, so Cain proceeds to murder him. Legend has it that the sons of Seth (the son after Abel) represent the stream of the priesthood, which through the mysteries remained intuitively connected with the spiritual worlds and continued to foster religious impulses, and the sons of Cain represent the stream of the craftsmen, through which art and technology and outer civilization developed. These two streams then meet again in Christ incarnate, who as usual bridges the polarity and provides the potential to resolve the bitter enmity through higher, Love-imbued cognition.
The chopping of the children into pieces also reminds of Osiris, who was dismembered and scattered across the Earth (and was later rescued/restored by his son, Horus). I think the Greeks also had a similar myth with Dionysius the Elder. Esoterically that symbolizes the death of ancient spiritual sight so the individual thinking soul could emerge. Perhaps there is something similar symbolized in this myth, since the higher modes of cognition in their innocent spiritual state still flow through young children. I'm not sure about that. Of course there are probably many more deeper layers of meaning as well. I was curious as to what the pomegranate flower may relate to. A quick Google search revealed the following:
The pomegranate foremost stands for fertility, a notion that dates back to Greek mythology where it is associated with the story of Persephone who is taken by Hades to the underworld. The multiple seeds stand for “rebirth”, in this case her return to her mother to begin the spring season. In many religions, it is not unusual for them to be gifted to women hopeful to become pregnant where they believe that a taste of the sweet seeds will encourage a seed to be planted of her own. In the Christian world, the fruit is associated with the Virgin Mary as meaning “eternal life” as well as a reference to Doom’s Day. Weddings, baptisms and birthday are typical occasions where the pomegranate makes an appearance during the celebration as a drink, food or present to the guest of honor(s).
Thank you for the comments, Ashvin! Yes, it's pretty terrifying. I still remember how it felt the first time I heard it, trying to come to terms with, or grasp, those dark, unfathomable magnitudes of hatred.
You and Cleric often say that the scriptures can be entirely re-read as esoteric word, and it's so insightful to attempt to do the same with the myths. Lots of knowledge and imagination would be necessary, I feel I can barely start to scratch the surface, but I'm still grateful for the minuscule (for me) openings that even a short exchange like this one can suggest.
I agree, Federica, it is very rewarding to revisit, with our living thinking, these amazing heritages from whence our civilization arose. As people begin to explicitly or implicitly discern the spiritual depth structure of the human organism, and its relation to the unfolding Earthly and Cosmic rhythms, they will also discern how much profound truth and wisdom was embedded in these myths/scriptures. They all point to intimate realities which are still with us, modulating our cognitive soul-life and therefore our life experiences. Since you shared an ancient Greek myth, I want to share a passage from Steiner which can help orient us towards their complexities:
Steiner wrote:Hence in Greco-Latin times we have the remarkable phenomenon that mankind seems to be thrown upon its own resources, seems to be self-sufficient. There has been no epoch of civilisation since the Atlantean catastrophe during which man was thrown so entirely on his own resources, or in which so much depended upon his expressing his own peculiar self as in the Greco-Latin time. Hence we see too how everything in this epoch tends to bring to expression in its purest form the human individuality. It could be said that this was so because the guiding hierarchies slackened the reins, because at this time men were most left to themselves.
...
We said yesterday that in contradistinction to conditions prevailing in previous epochs — in the Persian and the Egypto-Chaldean epochs — during the Greco-Latin culture the reins of spiritual guidance from above were less tightly drawn. That the Greeks were conscious of this somewhat freer relationship between the divine Spirits and men is quite clear from the way in which they depicted their gods, giving them thoroughly human traits, one might even say human frailties, human passions, human sympathies and antipathies. From this we can infer that they knew that, just as human beings on the physical plane have to strive to make progress, the gods immediately above them do the same thing—they strive to transcend such qualities as they have. In fact, compared with the gods of Egypt or Persia, the Greek gods needed so much to make progress in their own evolution that they could not bother themselves much about men! Hence came that standing-upon-its-own-feet of Greek civilisation which is so truly human. The bond between gods and men was looser than ever before. It was just because they were aware of this that the Greeks could depict their gods as so human.
Here we find from another angle why the often maligned 'Lucifer impulse' towards 'dualistic perception-cognition' is a primary reason we can speak of higher human development in culture, which provides a foundation for our striving towards reunion with the spirit worlds in freedom. We easily forget these days how our ancestors had to struggle with the necessities of nature, constantly concerned about famines and droughts, or who would murder, rape, or pillage from them. There were no things such as universal human rights and dignity, equality before the law, free speech and exercise of religion, etc. We may imagine people always had the time and capacity to meditate in relative peace and solitude like we do now, keeping the last few thousand years of cultural progress in the blind spot. It's interesting to also notice how, what was portrayed as a rather gruesome act of dismemberment in ancient Egyptian and Greco-Latin myths - the weaning off of ancient clairvoyance - was
actively sought in the ancient Hebrew stream. The worship of idols was prohibited, the mixing in with other races and nations, and the intellectual faculty which could precisely analyze in terms of number, weight, and measure was cultivated.
"You shall do no injustice in judgment, in measurement of length, weight, or volume. You shall have honest scales, honest weights, an honest ephah, and an honest hin: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt."
It seems to me that revisiting these scriptures, myths, and fairy tales also help us recover a sense of more profound gratitude for the wondrous progress in human civilization which has been bestowed upon us, which we ourselves also partook in through previous incarnations, and therefore a sense of responsibility towards bringing these works to completion through the inner capacities which have been founded upon waves and waves of sacrifice.
"And in this I give advice: It is to your advantage not only to be doing what you began and were desiring to do a year ago; but now you also must complete the doing of it; that as there was a readiness to desire it, so there also may be a completion out of what you have. For if there is first a willing mind, it is accepted according to what one has, and not according to what he does not have."
But, as you also mentioned to Eugene, "
we should not imagine that we already have an idea of how our cognition would expand, along which lines." That has proven to be the greatest difficulty in communicating such things - because every act of communication is easily mistaken by the clever and cunning cat for an act of theorizing, speculating, modeling, as we see from the discussion on the other 'triadic idealism' thread. There is not in the least a reverent longing towards the unexpected, the unsuspected, the unimagined. These terms seem to have no true import for the clever intellect, which stands at the periphery and manages to assimilate all analogies, metaphors, illustrations, etc., which point to supra-sensory realities, to its own personalized conceptions and ends. The timely post you shared from Cleric also highlights that fact in a very helpful way, as usual, via the CRT analogy. It still isn't understood that all attempts to model spiritual reality, of necessity, try to speed up the intellect, cram in more concepts, and build ever-more complicated structures. It isn't understood that this process is exactly what is standing in the way of enlivening/expanding the thinking consciousness into resonance with unsuspected spiritual forces.
In that connection, I want to share some additional excerpts from Steiner's lecture on fairy tales. It should really highlight how we need to sacrifice a singular focus on the
content of our perceptions, experiences, thoughts, theories, models, etc., which we dimly try to match up with that reality so we can feel like we are making progress when we merely manage to reach the same things philosophers already accomplished hundreds of years ago, in order to actually experience the living texture of the cognitive soul-life which continuously animates that content.
If we study sagas, myths and legends, we will always find that their traits, while hearkening to supersensible laws, are pervaded by the laws of external reality, that they trace a path from the world of spirit into the external world. And the sources of historical accounts, or those that are in some way connected with history, are of course connected with actual figures. Fairy tale alone does not allow itself to be configured in real or historical garb, but remains quite free in regard to them. It can draw as it likes on everything that exists in reality, and does so. Fairy tales are therefore the purest offspring of ancient primitive clairvoyance, are something like compensation for loss of ancient, primitive clairvoyance. Prosaic minds, pedants, who regard everything with a professorial eye, may not feel this. Nor do they need to, for the simple reason that they invariably want to establish the relation of any truth to outer reality.
A figure like Capesius seeks the truth above all else. He cannot be satisfied by asking how a truth relates to ‘reality’. Is a truth confirmed, he asks himself, if we say it represents something that accords with the outer world? Things can be as true as you like, can be true and right and correct, yet may have as little connection with reality as the truth of that village lad who went to buy buns. His sums were correct but they bore no relation to reality: he worked out that, with his ten pennies, he should get five buns. This village lad behaved just like the philosophers who theorize about reality. But what he failed to consider was that in that particular village you got one free if you bought five. This was something that had no logic about it, and that no philosophy would have concluded. But nevertheless it was reality. So Capesius is not interested in how a particular idea, one or another concept, accords with ‘reality’. Instead his first question was what the human soul experiences in relation to any concept it forms. In everything that can only be outer reality, the human soul experiences desiccation, aridity, the capacity for continual death in the soul; and so Capesius needs to be refreshed by Frau Felicia’s fairy tale, needs something that need not be ‘true’ at all as far as external reality is concerned, a content that is real but that does not need to be true in the ordinary sense. And it is this content that helps prepare him to find his way into the occult world.
In the fairy tale we retain something like an offspring, an echo, of what people experienced in ancient clairvoyance. It is a form whose legitimacy is precisely due to the fact that no one who allows it to work upon them will assert that it bears a relationship to external reality. In the imaginative world of fairy tales, the poor lad who otherwise possesses nothing apart from his clever cat, takes ownership of a palace that protrudes into immediate reality. And so fairy tale can be a wonderful spiritual food for every age. When we tell children suitable fairy tales, we stir to life in the child’s soul something that does not lead them only toward life in a way that requires every idea to accord with external reality—for such a relationship to reality desiccates and lays waste the soul. By contrast, the soul stays alive and fresh, so that it penetrates the whole human organization, if it feels a higher reality in the lawful forms and figures of fairy-tale images. These lift the soul entirely above the outer world. A person becomes more vigorous in life, can take hold of life with more vitality if fairy tales have acted upon their soul in childhood. For Capesius, fairy tales kindle imaginative perception. It is not what they contain, not what they convey but the way they unfold, how one aspect links to the next, that works on in his soul. One feature allows soul forces to strive upward, another to strive downward, and in others, in turn, an interplay arises between ascending and descending powers. By these means his soul comes into movement, and there is drawn forth from it something that ultimately enables him to behold the world of spirit. For many, a fairy tale can be the most stirring, stimulating thing.
For many, a fairy tale can be the most stirring, stimulating thing. And this is why we find in fairy tales that originated in earlier times something that shows how aspects of ancient clairvoyant consciousness played into them. Originally, fairy tales were not ‘conceived’ by someone, no one worked them out—unlike the theories of modern folktale scholars who ‘explain’ fairy tales. No, they were not authored in the way we conceive of this but are the last remnants of ancient clairvoyance, were experienced in dream states by those who still had such capacities. What was seen in dream was related, like the tale of Puss-in-Boots, which is simply another version of the fairy tale I told you today. All fairy tales first originated as the last vestiges of a primordial clairvoyance. And so a true fairy tale can only be created if—either consciously or unconsciously—the power of Imagination is present, projecting into the soul of the fairy tale creator.
Steiner, Rudolf. The Mission of the New Spirit Revelation (p. 168). Rudolf Steiner Press. Kindle Edition.