Elements of The Religious
Beliefs of The Ancient
Greeks - [cont.]

The followers of the Orphic cult claimed, in order to acquire greater authority and prestige, not to mention validity from the point of view of age, that their hymns and songs pre-dated Homer, a fact which is rather dubious. At all events, in the 6th Century, there existed a rich Orphic corpus of literature of which, however, little has survived to this day. Orphism was embraced by many outstanding Greek intellectuals including Protagoras, in the early period, followed by Pindar, Plato, and the painter Polygnotos.

Orphism generally was a synthesized religious movement which had collected various elements of faith into a current that became a rushing torrent. Some scholars of Greek religion maintain that the idea of immortality which exists in the Eleusinian Mysteries originated with Orphism, or the Orphic mysteries. But this view does not hold water, for the idea of immortality, as it appears according to the facts, developed independently in different parts of the Greek world.

According to the Orphic cult, or perhaps more properly the Orphic heresy, at the apex of its theogony was Cronus, followed by Chaos and Aether. Later Cronus made a silver egg from which was born the first god Phanes also known as Hericapaeus. Then followed Zeus who was the beginning, the middle and the end, and who is almighty because he had swallowed both Hericapaeus and Metis. The Orphic cult also dealt with the creation of man and perhaps herein lies its most original contribution to Greek religion. The Orphics maintained that Persephone had begot a son by Zeus named Dionysos Zagreus. Zeus had intended this son to rule the world. But the Titans hacked him to pieces and devoured the parts. Athena, however, saved his heart which she gave to Zeus. He in turn devoured the heart and as a result there emerged Dionysos the son of Semele. But Zeus wished to obtain revenge from the Titans. He thus struck them with his thunder-bolts and from the resultant ash man was born. This man had something divine in him which derived from Dionysos Zagreus, and at the same time something undivine deriving from the Titans.

The purpose of the myth dealing with the murder of Zagreus was to explain the sublimation of the ritual in the Dionysiac orgies which practiced the dismembering and consumption of the god who was represented by the animal instinct. And Dionysos Zagreus was represented by the animal instinct, for according to another variation of the story, when Zagreus was being pursued by the Titans in their attempt to slay him, he kept changing into [p. 119] various beasts, but finally was killed when he was in the shape of a bull. Another version of the myth, less well known, relates that Zagreus was murdered by the Titans who ensnared him when he was yet a child. Orphism accepts the doctrine, as pointed out above, that man had within himself a good nature, the divine of Dionysos, and possessed an evil nature, that inherited from the Titans. How such a doctrine evolved is difficult to say. According to one view, the feeling that god also dwelt within man is that which made the Orphic cultists believe that the nature of man is such as to be divided into two parts, the good or divine, and the evil, or Titanic.

The Orphics, as in the case of the initiates of the Eleusinian Mysteries, expected a better lot in the next world. But in contrast with the Eleusinian cult, the Orphics visualized the life of the blest as a continuous festivity, somewhat like the festive gaiety of the Dionysiac worship.

The purification was of the utmost significance to the Orphics. All those who had not purified themselves live, in accordance to the belief, in impurity and abomination, and would continue to live in the same state in the next world. The expression 'he lies in filth' derived from such a doctrine. All those who were accepted for initiation in the heresy had to rub themselves with coarse flour and mud and were then initiated. As in the Eleusinian Mysteries, initiation assured the members of the cult an existence after death.

Evidence of what the Orphics believed of the underworld comes from Pausanias who describes the painting by Polygnotos in the treasury of the Cnidians at Delphi. The Orphic influence in the painting is very obvious, for one readily recognizes the portrayals of the journeys to the underworld as these are contained in the poetry of the mystical cult. Polygnotos portrayed Charon, Acnus who braids a rope which is being chewed by a donkey, Eurynomus who removes the flesh from the bones of the dead, and the fate of the uninitiated who gather water in broken pitchers.

The Orphics believed it the duty of man to release the soul from the body, for the soul was divine, and the body was the evil element that came from the Titans. In this prison, the body, the soul does not enter only once, but returns in a kind of transmigration. Hades was conceived as Hell, a place of retribution for the unrighteous, from where it returned to earth and again became contaminated by its entrance into the body. Thus there results a kind of vicious circle which never ceases until the person is initiated into the orgies of the Orphics. Once the person has been initiated, and purified, and abstains from certain foods, his soul is cleansed and it descends into Hades and partakes of the 'life' of the blest. And he partakes of the life of the blest, since as long as man fulfills all the precepts of the Orphic cult he can hope in the grace of Dionysos, the deliverer, the liberating divinity who releases the soul from the process of transmigration and unites it with himself which is the divinity from which the soul was descended.

Such precepts initially limited to the ritualistic aspect only, involving a purification and initiation, evolved in time in to something more noble and exalted, for the Orphic cult demanded of its followers a moral life and the practice of certain asceticism in their lives, since only in this manner could they hope to redeem themselves from their Titanic inheritance. The adherence to ethical rules imposed upon their followers as well as the moderate life, convinced the Orphics, and perhaps justly so, that their cult was more pious, [p. 120] and that they themselves were more just than members of other religious cults who did not adhere to their doctrines.

The Orphics also insisted on justice. But their attitude to justice was not that of a problem involving the entire family, but only the individual. The individual, they were wont to say, and not the family, could unite with god, and so the individual and not the family could be rewarded or punished for doing good or evil. Since they observed that often times the unjust were not punished on earth, they would suffer in the lower world, just as in the underworld the just would receive their reward.

But Orphism did not become a universal cult. It continued to remain a heresy in view of the demands which it had and which were not easy to meet on the part of individuals. Asceticism was not a practice that fitted the Greek character. And its theories were difficult to understand, only the great intellects being able to grasp and understand the doctrines.

'Orphism', the learned Professor Nielson says, 'is a combination and the acme of all the restless and varied religious currents of the ancient period'.

And in fact, the addition of the concept of the creation of man to the theogony which provides an explanation of the good and the evil in the nature of man, the probity and uprightiousness of the ceremony and of life, the moral precepts, mysticism in its worship, the portrayals of life in the next world, the punishment in the underworld, faith in a happy lot for those who have been purified and initiated, all convince Professor Nielson that: 'The greatness of Orphism lies in the blending of all these elements into a system, and in its indubitable originality in making the crux of its doctrine the individual in his relationship with guilt and retribution'.

Pure Orphism should not be confused with certain other Orphic cults one of which was that of the Orphic ritualists who exploited manÍs innate fear of death and released their followers from sin by means of purification and gave release for even those already dead, in exchange for a generous fee from the naive.

Orphic literature has dealt at great length also with eschatology, and in its hymns are described even the punishments and the tortures which awaited the uninitiated and the immoral and the criminal. Punishment of course was in accordance with the degree of the transgression. These dialogues with the dead, the descent into Hades, and the descriptions of the sufferings of the chastised, all made a colossal impression not only on the faithful members of the Orphic cult, but even on the Christians of the early centuries, in the Middle Ages, and perhaps in modern times in certain instances.

But Greek religion did not stop, it continued to evolve without interruption, and when finally restless intellects appeared on the scene, exploratory in nature, such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, religious convictions began to change, the power of the Olympian gods began to wane, ancestor worship took a secondary or tertiary place to eventually be forgotten completely in later years, and mystical faiths began to acquire more and more importance, more and greater significance. And this development continued until the fourth Century after the birth of Christ, when the Greek world turned in its entirety to Jesus of Nazareth and the great intellects immersed in Platonic thought and in the doctrines of other great philosophers, presented to the humble god of Judaic love, the benevolent Jesus, a new interpretation which became known as Greco-Christian philosophy. [p. 121]