Aurea Vidyā Collection 6 - Orphism and the Initiatory Tradition

The Author of this book acknowledges that he has merely touched the surface of the issue of the Sacred Mysteries and the events that have characterised the life of Orpheus. On the other hand, it is not his task to expatiate on a problem that would not provide any advantage but would simply serve to satisfy empirical intellective curiosity. To say that the Philosophy of Pythagoras, Parmenides, Plato, and so on, belongs to the Philosophia perennis because it is not, in fact, individual and limited by time is not to detract from their personality. Far from it, for this is to acknowledge them as 'mediators', 'divine transmitters', or avatāras, as they would be called in the East. If one could comprehend the Philosophy of Plato in its essence and realise it in practice, one would undoubtedly reach the point of transfiguring one's own being. Plato's Philosophy is Metaphysics based on a supra-ontological Principle, a theology, an ontology, a mysticism, and an ethic which is both individual and social: all of which take practical form in an authentic teaching which is initiatory in the widest sense of the word. And Orpheus? What can we say of this great Sage, Magus, Theologian, Innovator, Rectifier; this ṛṣi, to use the word from Vedānta? As the following pages will seek to show, Orpheus is another mediator/bridge, a great avatāra, who rectified the cult of Dionysus which had deteriorated and had become superstition; revealed Truth of an intelligible and Apollonian order; devised a science of Rite and Number by means of music; instituted the Mysteries, both the Lesser and the Greater; left behind him, under the aegis of Apollo [ἀ-πόλλων = not many], an impression, a vibration, an influence of such magnitude that they can still be felt today. Furthermore, he exerted a…